


Weird Soup

by rarmaster



Series: YWKON [15]
Category: Tales of the Abyss, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, Gen, Implied Past Abuse, Platonic Soulmates, Universe hopping + alternate self meeting shenanigans, not canon compliant because i forgot mieu existed, tfw meeting an alt version of urself / ur best friend dredges up old trauma bc he's a nosy bastard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:02:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 43,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25838503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rarmaster/pseuds/rarmaster
Summary: it opens up infinite possibilities to all of the variations you can make!Jade and Mythra somehow wind up in the wrong universe. They don't so much crash the plot of Abyss as simply put it on hold for a week or so while everyone tries to fix this mess, send them back home, and also Introspects Like Hell.Or: two Jades! that's absolutely one more than any universe was meant to deal with!!
Relationships: Jade Curtiss & Jade Curtiss, Jade Curtiss & Mythra
Series: YWKON [15]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1222385
Comments: 24
Kudos: 27





	1. if I am prepared it all works out really well

**Author's Note:**

> i do not even remember why we pitched YWKON Jade and Mythra crashing Abyss but i was so taken with all the character introspection opportunities that i blinked and suddenly had, uh, 30k??? it's not even done, but i felt like posting it as a multichap, so here we are
> 
> if you want to understand what the fuck is YWKON and what the fuck the alternate versions of Jade and Mythra are about, go read [26k about that here!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24173908) it's very good i promise
> 
> thanks to Aera for constantly enabling me and Nael for finding me a good portion of these chapter titles. when the fic is done i'll link to where they all came from. You'll Never Believe The Gimmick (you might)

Jade Curtiss is very happily minding his own business—filling out the last of the paperwork regarding the brief emergency Peony summoned him here for. It was minor military nonsense, entirely Malkuth related, which means Jade is here alone. After all, why bother Luke and the rest with Malkuth politics? He doesn’t know where they’ve been spending their week off, just that they should be returning to pick him up in about two days’ time. Which should give him enough time to finish the paperwork, barring any distractions.

Distractions such as the sudden burst of seventh fonons and completely undignified yelp from the young woman who just _materialized_ in his office, which would be bad enough if not for the fact she was just deposited _on his desk._

Jade gets to his feet, stunned.

“I beg your pardon,” he says, more surprised than he would like to be. But what _was_ that? A hyperresonance? The idea of more than just Luke and Asch being capable of pulling off _solo_ hyperresonance makes his skin crawl, just a fraction.

“Shit,” the girl says, still wildly undignified as she scrambles to get to her feet, dislodging most of his paperwork in the process. She looks to be… somewhere in her twenties? Her hair’s blonde, and it’s long enough to rival Luke’s before he cut it. But what _really_ catches Jade’s attention is the way she _glows._ At first he mistakes the markings for tattoos—and what dedication, he thinks, to tattoo _that much_ of your body—but then he realizes that those lines of light in her skin are indeed lines _of light,_ and they are glowing faintly green, and they connect to a crystal of the same color that is set _in_ the skin of her collarbone. As far as body modifications go, this seems excessive, and the way fonons sing around her is… off.

There’s enough of the sixth fonon gathered around that Jade would wonder if she was about to cast, except she’s getting to her feet and dusting herself off, and nothing about her actions even _suggests_ the focus required to cast an arte. Even more intriguing is the way _seventh_ fonons behave around her. They aren’t nearly as pronounced as the sixth, but still seem more present than should be probable within your average fonist.

She also beats him to the punch when it comes to speaking.

“Oh good, Jade, at least you’re here too,” she says.

Jade raises his eyebrows in open surprise. “Do I know you?” he asks.

If you had asked Jade, before this moment, if he knew what heartbreak looked like, he would have said yes. However, he’s reconsidering that. The way the woman’s face very hastily flickers through surprise then _horror_ then grief is a much stronger example of it than he’s ever seen. And over himself? Interesting.

“That’s—” she splutters, and then her grief becomes confusion then relief as her gaze flits away, and the confusion only grows, as do the hum of seventh fonons around her. “Hold on. He’s _how far_ away!?” she demands, of no one in particular. “How’s that even—the world’s not even that big?”

“You mind sharing with the class?” Jade asks, because having a madwoman spitting nonsense in his office is the last thing he wants to actually deal with, so she better have a good excuse for whatever this is.

She rounds on him. “What’s seven _thousand_ miles south of here?” she demands. “And how is that a real number that my core is pinging me with?”

Jade pockets the latter half of that outburst for later consideration. “A desert,” he answers, plainly. “And depending on how directly south you’re talking, Chesedonia is in that area as well.” He doesn’t have to be paying close attention at all to tell that the town name registers no recognition in her. That he pockets for later, as well. “What, exactly, are you so interested in that happens to be exactly seven thousand miles south of here?”

“ _My_ Jade.”

And just like that the recognition, the horror, the _way she knew his name_ all click into place. Jade feels something akin to—fear is likely too strong a word, but it still sits somewhere around there, curdling his stomach.

“Your Jade?” he repeats, and because he is not stupid, he follows up with: “Do you mean to tell me that there are _two_ of me in the world right now? And the other is somewhere in the desert outside Chesedonia?”

“Architect I _hope_ he’s not actually in a desert, he’s gonna hate that.”

Another relevant piece of information that Jade tucks away, though it’s certainly not as important right now as the rest of this conversation.

“Let me stress: if there are _two of me_ in this world, the both of us will face quite dire consequences—even if I am not immediately tried under the assumption that I have performed fomicry on myself, _your_ Jade—” strange, to call him that, but might as well use the same terminology as she is using, “—could, at the very least, be arrested for impersonating a Malkuth officer.”

The woman blinks quite rapidly, and the fear on her face at least tells Jade she understood quite perfectly.

“Officer?” she repeats, voice quiet, and then—“Officer of what?” It’s not cocky, it’s terrified. “How many people would recognize you?”

“Colonel Jade Curtiss, Malkuth 3rd Division.” It’s faster to simply state his title in explanation, so he does. She pales. “I would wager a great many people would recognize me on sight.”

“Even if like—you were in civilian clothes?”

“I suppose fewer people in Chesedonia might, but it’s difficult to say. My reputation precedes me.”

The woman rakes a hand through her hair, scowling not at Jade, but at—south, he realizes. She’s looking almost due south. If he had any doubts she knew the apparent exact location of the other Jade before, they’re gone now. ( _And he didn’t really doubt it, anyway. Just because he doesn’t understand how something works doesn’t mean it’s impossible._ ) He doesn’t like the restlessness in her posture, though, doesn’t like the flick of her eyes towards the door.

“If you think I’m going to let you go before you’ve explained everything, you should reconsider,” Jade says, letting the edge of a threat seep into his voice.

“I can take you.”

“You aren’t going to make it far out of _the Emperor’s palace_ if I raise the alarm.”

That gets her attention.

“Emperor’s—!?” she begins, then all-but staggers where she stands, horror crossing her face again. “Oh, fuck, I think someone just recognized him.” She looks like she’s about to be sick, or—maybe angry, but she wrestles that back down.

“And how exactly do you know that?” Jade asks, more frustrated than urgent. ( _Just because something can exist without him understanding it, doesn’t mean he_ enjoys _that lack of understanding._ )

“The emotion bleed just—” she begins, and trails off, like that’s enough of an explanation. It isn’t.

“The what?”

“The—” She scowls. “The emotion bleed,” she repeats. “He’s my _driver_?”

“You’re speaking absolute nonsense.”

“I’m— _do y’all not have blades here??_ ”

Jade could be obnoxious and insist that yes of course they have blades, because what use are most weapons or even cutlery without a blade; but he also recognizes that she is not using the term blade as he would use the term blade, and does not want to confuse her when what he should really be doing is getting her to explain.

“We do not.”

“I—look there’s no time for that, I can’t just _leave him alone_ in a world that is going to recognize him for _someone else_ —”

Jade moves to intercept her before she gets to the door, blocking her with his body. He won’t use more force than he needs to, when he needs to. And since she backs off the moment he gets in her way, clearly that was enough.

He smiles at her, sharp.

“Then you better get explaining.”

\- - -

By all accounts of _course_ the last thing Jade wanted to do was be dumped unceremoniously on his ass in what appears to be the middle of nowhere. But he thinks, if he had to be dropped in the middle of nowhere, did it really have to be a _desert?_ By the time he’s righted himself and dusted the sand off of his pants, he already feels like he’s baking alive. Downsides to being an ice blade. He considers whether or not he’s desperate enough to pull his hair up just to get it off his neck, and then desperately hopes whatever hairties he has in his pockets are _his_ and not Mythra’s.

He turns around to do a survey of the area, get his bearings, squinting against the harsh light. The sun is gross. The heat is gross. Frankly the sand that’s worked its way under his clothes despite having only been here _two seconds_ is gross. The ether is wrong, too. Like, of course he should not expect any ice or water ether anywhere near here, this is a desert, but there’s still something… off, about how it tastes. It’s ether, but it’s also not, somehow. Like it’s something else.

Also important to note: Mythra isn’t here. Instead she’s several thousand miles north. At least they’re on the same planet—though _how they got here,_ Jade would very much like to know—but it’s still frustrating. That’s a very long way to walk, and Jade has no idea how transportation works on this world.

Oh well, at least there are people walking his direction. A party of six, which is surprisingly large for a group in the _desert,_ but who knows! Maybe the desert is a nice vacation spot for anyone who isn’t an ice blade! Jade wouldn’t know and frankly doesn’t care. All that really matters here is he can ask them where he is and how he can get himself closer to Mythra—

Except.

“Colonel?” calls one voice.

“ _Jade!?_ ” calls another.

And just like that Jade’s heart stops.

He goes very still, masks plastering themselves upon his face without his consent, all while anger spikes in his bones, anger and—he’s dizzy, a little, and it’s not just the heat. It’s been so long since- since _grey walls and pleasant smiles, jokes cracked that he no longer understands, being politely told that he hasn’t changed at all despite the fact he cannot remember the person giving him the compliment, his driver’s voice crisp and condescending—_

**He doesn’t have a driver, anymore.**

“My, it really is him!” says one of the girls; blonde.

“Woooow,” says another of the girls; a child, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen the Colonel out of his uniform before~”

“I can’t believe you missed us so much you figured out how to, uh, teleport?” says one of the boys; also blonde, and probably too old to be calling a boy.

Jade despises all of this. If they were not in the desert, the temperatures might have dropped to subzero for how much ether he is outputting. A terrible stress response, he knows, but it’s the only one he can get away with without his body moving an inch. Not that he _needs_ to keep all of his emotions under lock and key, but habits—even old ones, perhaps especially old ones—are difficult to break.

It is another of the boys—this one with green hair—that asks the question that finally makes Jade snap.

“Are you alright, Jade?”

And it’s innocent enough, but:

“I have no idea who any of you are,” Jade enunciates clearly and coldly.

They all stop approaching. At least there’s that.

“Uh,” says the redheaded boy in white, looking stunned. He laughs, nervously, hand reaching up as if to touch his hair but stopping long before it gets there, suggesting he either got distracted halfway through or expected it to be longer. “Come on, Jade, that’s not funny.”

“I wasn’t joking.”

The youngest girl laughs and stage whispers to the remaining girl who has yet to speak: “Oh he’s really angry—”

The quiet girl frowns at her companion, then takes a step forward. “Colonel—”

“Stop that,” Jade snaps, scowling. The implications of her calling him that are more than he wants to deal with right now, because said implications are stupefying. “Don’t call me that. I’m not the man you’re looking for.”

“But you’re Jade, aren’t you?” the blonde girl asks.

“Not a Jade who knows you.”

( _“Hey, I remember you! Aren’t you ~~Dr. Uzuki’s~~ blade—”_

 **That man is dead.** )

“You really don’t recognize us?” the blonde boy asks, confused.

“I have never met any of you in my life.”

“So what’s this then?” the redhead asks. “A sudden bout of amnes— _oh._ ” He doesn’t even finish the word before his eyes go wide with something that looks like either realization or horror, or perhaps both. He sends a nervous, searching look to his companions. “You guys don’t think…”

“I suppose… it _could_ be possible…” the green-haired boy allows, his face scrunched up in concern.

“On a list of things I wouldn’t put past Dist to do,” the child girl offers.

“Or even Jade himself, I suppose,” the blonde boy muses, but he looks uncomfortable. “He outlawed fomicry for a _reason,_ after all—”

“If you are going to theorize about me, the least you could do is do it in terms I can understand?” Jade interjects, raising his voice. He hates this, he hates the thought of being mistaken for a man he isn’t; but that in turn is why he hasn’t moved from this spot. If _they_ recognized him, then who else? Those girls both called him _Colonel,_ after all—again, best not to think about the depth of that implication, but it sets Jade’s teeth on edge.

Of course he could interrupt them all with the truth of it ( _him being from another world, at all_ ) but the more information he can glean about this world and this world’s Jade, the better. So he’ll hear their theory, first.

“Oh, sorry,” the redhead says. “You- you aren’t a replica, are you?” he asks.

“A what?”

“Luke, we didn’t know you were until we saw Asch,” the blonde girl interjects, quietly.

“Oh, good point.”

“Do you know a man named Dist?” the green-haired child tries.

Jade scowls. “I do not, no.”

“Well there goes _that_ theory,” the child girl huffs.

The redhead scowls, deep in thought, his arms crossed over his chest. His attention is mostly turned towards his green-haired companion. “There’s… not a way to tell, is there?” he asks. “I mean, we replicas are mostly comprised of seventh fonons—” (Jade has no idea what a fonon is, but he tucks away the information for later) “—so if… I mean, do _I_ radiate a bunch of those, Ion?”

“It’s…” the green-haired child replies, but doesn’t seem exactly prepared to give an answer.

“What if Tear or I tried a healing arte?” the blonde girl suggests, uncertain. ( _Is she human, Jade wonders underneath his frustration. Can humans use artes, in this world? None of their ether sings at all like that of a blade’s._ ) “Seventh fonons react to seventh fonons, after all…”

“Does it really feel any different when you heal Luke versus the rest of us?” the blonde boy counters.

“Well.”

This is ridiculous. Jade huffs and pinches the bridge of his nose.

“I am not a replica,” he says, because they have exhausted the point of being useful and the misunderstandings are only going to get worse if he lets this go on any longer. “As far as I’m aware, I got teleported here from another world. I am not the Jade you know, nor do I belong here.”

They all stare at him.

“Another world?” the redhead asks.

“Now he really is messing with us,” the blonde boy sighs.

“Let me prove it,” Jade says. He rolls up his sleeves. It’s a relief from the heat, which is a blessing, but also puts his ether lines on enough display they cannot be missed—though he isn’t wearing gloves, either, so someone could have easily noticed his hands if they had been paying attention. He turns his arms, front to back, so they can see the red lines of light that are etched into his skin in clear detail. He only wishes he were still a normal blade so that they would glow significantly more than they actually do anymore.

Still though, it’s something. They all watch him with newfound confusion.

“And if that isn’t enough,” Jade continues, then reaches up to tug down the collar of his shirt and his sweater vest enough that they can see his core crystal. “From your faces, I’d wager you have never seen anything like this before. Which means nor do you have blades in this world; at least not as I have blades in mine.”

Silence, for a moment.

And then:

“What are…?” the redhead begins, but can’t seem to find the words for his question.

Jade hates explaining, but he’s the only one here to do it, so, to start from the top:

“Core crystal,” he says, flicking it, before tugging his clothes back into place, “ether lines,” he continues, flicking those as well, “both defining physical traits of a blade, which I myself am. In my world, blades are the only beings capable of artes such as healing and elemental attacks. Humans can only perform artes when driving a blade. And I think at this point, I have said enough that there is no possible way I’d be making it up—that’s an awful lot of details to remember for a joke, isn’t it?”

“It is…” the blonde boy agrees.

“Way too many,” the child girl echoes.

“I believe you, Jade,” the green-haired boy says, smiling somewhat vacantly, but it lands close enough to genuine that Jade doesn’t care. And then: “Oh… your name is Jade, right?”

“It is,” Jade says.

“Two of Jade… now there’s a scary thought…” the redhead mumbles, his face scrunched up. “But at least he’s not a replica, I guess? But imagine, another world, with _another Jade._ ” He shudders.

“We should help him return to his own world,” the blonde girl says.

“Well duh,” the child girl interjects. “Like Luke said, having _two_ Colonels is just—eugh.” And when she shudders, it is absolutely emphasized for dramatics.

“It’s also the right thing to do,” the blonde girl scolds. The child girl seems unfazed.

“I’d appreciate it,” Jade tells them. “Though before we do that, I have a request. Would any of you happen to know what lies approximately seven thousand miles due north of here? And, more importantly, a convenient way to get there quickly?” he asks, and tries not to be too overwhelmed by the staggering distance that really is. He and Mythra could likely stand on opposite sides of the major continent of Aselia and only be about five thousand away from each other, and that’s with both of them on a beach, if not in the ocean.

( _Better to think about the distance than the uncomfortable fact that a blade and driver can pinpoint each other’s exact location in this manner. It’s useful, of course, and Jade is ever grateful for it at the particular moment because it means he’ll actually have a chance of_ finding _Mythra in this unfamiliar world, but…_

_Well._

_~~There’s a reason murder was his only way out.~~_ )

“Is… there any particular thing you’re looking for there…?” the blonde boy asks.

“A friend,” Jade answers, vaguely. “Don’t ask how I know that’s where she is. It’s a blade thing.”

“That’s… I _think_ Grand Chokmah is that far due north of us, as far as cities go,” the quiet girl offers. “We could start there…?”

“It probably would be better if we _didn’t_ leave another person alone in a world they don’t recognize,” the blonde girl agrees.

“Besides, that’s where our Jade is,” the redhead says. “So we can always ask him for help on how to get you guys home—he knows all sorts of things!”

“We’ll have to be careful though, Luke,” the green-haired boy warns, his face dark. “I’m not sure we should let anyone see both Jades next to each other, considering…”

“Oh, right.” The redhead scratches at the back of his head. “Even if _we_ know it’s not fomicry, everyone else—especially those who know Jade—will assume…”

“Exactly.”

Hmm, now’s as good of a time as any. Jade reaches into his pockets and feels around for a moment—only one hairtie, really? Pulling it out reveals what he feared: a red one with a little red bow attached to it. Technically, one of Mythra’s, but his pride isn’t such that he would refuse to be seen wearing it. Especially now; beggars can’t be choosers.

So: while the others are discussing, though most are still watching him, Jade just hums and ties his hair back in a ponytail. Between this and his rolled-up sleeves, the heat is already becoming more bearable. Plus if he leaves his sleeves like this, everyone can see his ether lines. Normally he wouldn’t dare display them so proudly in public, and perhaps it is unwise in a familiar world, _but._

“Better?” he asks his new traveling companions.

They all blink at him for a moment—the hairtie, maybe? A way they’ve never seen their Jade, before? Whatever it is, all he has to do is stare at them, eyebrows raised in invitation for anyone to comment, and they all immediately decide they have other things to be interested in. Whatever reputation the Jade who lives here has, it must be some reputation indeed.

“Well, I can’t imagine anyone mistaking you for the Colonel unless they already know you really well,” the child girl declares, brightly. “You could pass for his brother like this.”

“Does he have one of those?”

“A sister,” the redhead says. Then he laughs. “Heh, you could almost pass for her. I never realized how much you two look alike until just now.”

“Right?” the blonde girl agrees. “There was definitely a resemblance, but when Jade pulls his hair up, it’s even more obvious—”

“Can we get going?” Jade interjects. “The sooner we’re out of this heat, the happier I’ll be. They’ll be plenty of time to talk on the road.”

“That sounds like Jade,” the redhead sighs. Jade quells the disgust in his core. “But yeah, let’s head back to the Albiore. With that, we should be in Grand Chokmah by tonight, right?”

Whatever vehicle this Albiore is, it must be something else, Jade thinks.

(He’s right.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter specifically has art because the "Jade?" / "I Don't Recognize You" interaction was haunting me, so [i drew an angsty comic](https://rarmaster.tumblr.com/post/623303932051079168/ywkon-tfw-all-that-happened-was-you-got-dropped)
> 
> also [jade's outfit](https://rarmaster.tumblr.com/post/623304051143098368/also-ywkon-jade-doodle-of-his-outfit-in-weird-soup)


	2. It’s exactly what we all feel like.

It takes Mythra—and her name is Mythra; she starts by introducing herself, at least—several minutes to do the explaining. About being transported here from another world but no she doesn’t know how. About yes she knows another Jade who yes looks identical to him and yes appears to generally be the same person minus the vastly different memories. ( _Disgusting. As if one of him wasn’t enough._ ) She also has quite a deal to say about what blades are and how they work, which Jade is fascinated by. He learns that blades are the only beings on her world capable of her world’s equivalent of fonic artes, that they live multiple lifetimes, and cannot really be killed so long as their core crystal remains undamaged (though they will lose their memories should they revert to their core crystal), oh and: they need a driver to even take physical shape in the world to begin with.

She only talks so long, he suspects, because about fifteen minutes into the conversation she stops and declares her Jade is moving towards her at a speed that implies he’ll be here before the night is out; which means he is traveling on the Albiore, and frankly Jade isn’t even surprised that the other Jade ended up with Luke and the rest. He wishes them all the luck in dealing with him, though.

“So he’s with your friends, then?” Mythra asks, suspicious.

“They are the only ones who possess transportation that fast.”

“They better take good care of him,” Mythra says, and Jade has no idea what he’s meant to feel about the fact she is not only threatening his friends, but also seems entirely serious about it, and with regards to the safety of _an alternate version of himself._

Content that her driver is moving towards her and that it’ll be faster to let him than to try and go searching for him, Mythra apparently has no qualms about staying put. Nor does she appear to have any qualms about talking Jade’s ear off. He cannot decide if she’s talking so much because she’s nervous and wants to distract herself, or if she simply is familiar enough with his thirst for knowledge and—bafflingly—likes him enough to indulge him. It might be both.

(At some point he’ll have to interrupt her long enough to tell someone at the gates to intercept Luke’s party and tell them to stay put until he can meet them. Surely one of them has enough sense to _not_ parade a second Jade through Grand Chokmah, but better head them off before that even has the _chance_ of happening, given the stakes. Still, hours yet before he’ll need to do that. Plenty of time to listen to Mythra talk.)

Which is how Jade also learns a great deal about blade physiology. For starters; they don’t have hearts because their core crystals circulate ether for them—ether is what they have instead of blood, apparently, and she describes ether as the building blocks that make up her world much like fonons are in this world, though she doesn’t really have an answer for how blades run on pure ether, despite the fact that presumably every atom in a human body—including blood—is also made out of ether at a base level. She does offer to cut herself, though, so he can see how blades bleed for himself, which is disturbing, but also if anyone is going to know exactly how morbid his curiosity gets, it would be one of his close friends, wouldn’t it? ( _Strange, to think of anyone other than, oh, Peony, on that list._ )

Jade is touched in a weird way, and intrigued, but he is no longer the little boy who would slaughter monsters in his backyard just to find out how they were put together, so:

“You don’t have to, thank you,” he tells her. “After all, if I get blood on carpet, Peony charges me to get it cleaned.”

Mythra scowls. “I mean it’s not blood and I doubt it’ll get on the carpet, but—”

“Still, it won’t be necessary. There’s no need for you to hurt yourself.”

“Blades heal faster than humans do, it’d be gone in like twenty minutes if it was small,” Mythra continues arguing, her expression close enough to pouting that Jade feels absolutely no remorse following up with:

“Don’t pout, it’s unbecoming.”

“Wow.”

Her response is single-note, offended but without any real weight behind it. Jade simply hums to himself, smiling in the pleased and somewhat dismissive way that always makes people angry with him. And since it’s been nearly thirty minutes and his paperwork is still scattered across the floor from Mythra’s arrival, he should really do something about that, so he bends to start picking it up.

“Oh, shit, my bad,” Mythra says. “Can’t believe I left that all over the floor like a dumbass. Here, let me help.”

Jade straightens immediately to shoot a glare at her. “I’d prefer if you didn’t.”

Mythra responds with an expression that suggests she thinks him rather dense. “What, you think I don’t know how you organize shit?” And she continues helping, as if she didn’t even hear him tell her not to.

It would be frustrating if she wasn’t right—she _does_ appear to know how he sorts all of his paperwork. It’s somewhat unsettling. He supposes it makes sense, when she comes from a universe where his closest friend _isn’t_ the emperor and _can_ be bothered with paperwork, but, even still, it’s uncomfortable as well. A piece of him that he never wanted to share but she knows it, anyway.

“What does your Jade do?” he asks, so he doesn’t have to think about it. “Jobwise, I mean.”

“Oh, mostly just accounting for a friend these days,” Mythra answers, offhand, as she shuffles papers. “Pays room and board, that’s all we really need.”

Jade isn’t sure if he should ask how the hell she knows his filing system if she’s only ever had to file _accounting reports,_ or if he should fish for more information. There’s no way he can imagine himself doing something so mundane and _enjoying_ it. But he doesn’t have the time to pick a question to ask, because—

“Oh dude, is _that_ what your signature looks like?” Mythra says, holding a piece of paper up to admire it.

Jade blinks at her once. And then again. “Are you implying you’ve never seen my signature, despite the fact you regularly help me sort paperwork in your world?” he asks.

“Uh,” Mythra says. She’s gone very rigid. When she speaks it’s huffy, faux-offended. “Of course I’ve seen it! It just looks different in this world, _duh,_ ” she says, and Jade might believe her if it hadn’t taken her so long to answer, if she was giving him more than fleeting eye contact right now.

He files that one away for later.

Mythra’s quiet for a long while after, long enough that they finish getting his paperwork restacked on his desk in near silence. She doesn’t even seem surprised when he sits back down to finish it, merely sits down and makes herself comfortable on the floor, for some reason.

“I have chairs, you know,” he tells her.

“Floor’s close—” she begins, and then stops, rather abruptly. She stares up at him like a startled deer, and then she _blushes;_ at least he assumes it’s a blush, seeing as it’s the same green as her core crystal ( _blades run on ether, indeed_ ). And then she gets up. And she doesn’t look at him. And she doesn’t say anything. And she sits down in a chair.

He is not enough of a jerk to ask what her sitting on the floor puts her closer to; quite frankly he doesn’t even need to ask to know. Disturbing.

“Anyway can I ask you a question?” Mythra asks.

“I can’t exactly stop you, now can I?”

“Asshole.” The way her voice shapes around the word is more fond than annoyed. He supposes that only makes sense. “I meant if it’d distract you.”

“Shouldn’t you know the answer to that? You seem to know everything else about me.”

“Which means I know not all paperwork is created equal.” Mythra laughs, here, privy to a joke Jade isn’t, but even so she continues: “I mean, unless it’s—” And then she stops. The laughter becomes silence. Interrupting herself twice in the span of a minute? She’s about to give Anise a run for her money.

“Unless it’s what?” Jade asks, ever nosy.

“Unless it just _is,_ fuck you,” Mythra answers, a coldness in her tone that almost strikes familiar, minus the cursing.

Alas, he doubts he’ll make any headway there. So instead:

“What was your question?”

“Oh, right.” She shifts how she’s sitting on in his armchair before she talks, scowling off into the distance. Her knees are pulled up towards her chest, except they’re resting sideways on the arm of the chair; he’d yell about feet on the furniture but it’s not worth his time. “It’s nothing, really,” Mythra says, not looking at him, a hand cradling her chin. “But does the name… Citan, uh, ring any bells?”

Odd question to have so much weight behind it.

“Who?” Jade asks.

“Last name Uzuki?”

“Never heard of him.”

Mythra doesn’t smile, exactly, but she looks much more relaxed. “Cool,” she says, too forceful to be casual. “Good.”

…Good?

_Good?_

That’s very interesting, indeed.

Jade writes the name on a scrap piece of paper so he can research the man later. Maybe he doesn’t exist. But if he does, well… It’s worth looking into, even if just to sate his own curiosity. He knows better than to ask Mythra about it right now, not when she reacted like that.

And he supposes he _could_ ask her names of people he knows, to find any correlation there—but that matters significantly less to him than discerning more about her relationship with the funhouse mirror version of him that she knows. They’re friends, of course, but also…

“Mythra, can you tell me more about blades and drivers?” he asks, still writing as he does. He can multitask, especially on this last leg of paperwork.

“Oh, uh, sure?” Mythra sits up a little straighter. “Anything in particular you wanted to know? I mean, knowing you, the answer is _everything,_ but got somewhere in mind you wanna start?”

She does know him well. It’s still very uncomfortable.

“Just… the relationship,” Jade asks. “What’s it like?”

That’s vaguer than the question he wants to ask, to be honest, but he knows that if you want someone to speak openly of something’s flaws, they are more likely to do so when they unequivocally have the floor. After all, one is bound to blindly defend something when they perceive it being attacked.

“Oh.” Mythra shrugs, thinking it over. “Well… when it’s working right, it’s about covering each other’s weak points. Just like any good friendship, you know?”

He can imagine. “And when it isn’t working?” he asks, because she left him that opening.

Mythra’s face goes the kind of dark he only ever sees in the mirror. “The system’s flawed,” she says, cold. “Doesn’t take a genius to figure that out.” She’s right, it doesn’t. “So there’s a lot of blades that get stuck with shitty drivers, and a system that encourages it, and a society that turns a blind eye. It… sucks. A lot.”

From her tone, _a lot_ might be underselling it.

“We’re doing what we can to fix it, though,” Mythra continues, a little brighter; determined but tired. “Of course, passing out a few illicit core chips with a memory patch only does so much. You can give blades a way to remember after they die, but… they still have to die to get out of a bad resonance. And you don’t really… forget. Dying.”

He doesn’t really need the confirmation. He asks, anyway.

“So you have a memory patch, then.”

“Yeah.”

“Is Jade your first driver?”

“No.”

He’s not insensitive enough to ask how many she’s had; but he is curious. Instead, though:

“Is he…?” he begins, but he’s not quite sure how to word it.

Mythra blinks at him.

Jade sighs. Sometimes people pick up when he trails off like that. Not this time.

“Forgive me for having little faith, but I’m not sure what the exact differences are between myself and your Jade.” He is a horrible person, after all. Is hers the same? Does he consider himself horrible enough to… Ah, better not rule it out. “And when you say—” he raises his hands for air-quotes, “—‘shitty’ drivers, it makes me wonder.”

Mythra’s face scrunches up, a hand over her core as she leans back, clearly offended.

“What? _No,_ ” she says, like she can’t believe he’s asking. And then she seems to remember herself, after a fashion, and grins. “I mean—I can handle him. I’ve kicked his ass for being a dick before, I’ll do it again.”

Sounds about right. “He probably benefits from having someone like that in his life.”

“You’d know, wouldn’t you.” Mythra smirks at him. “Got someone like that in yours?”

“Yes,” Jade answers, and doesn’t mention who.

“Good,” Mythra says, looking fond—ugh. Jade doesn’t mind it, so much, but it’s certainly unsettling to have someone he’s known only an hour look at him with an expression that makes it completely obvious she cares about him. And to make it worse, only a second later she gives him an appraising look. Normally those don’t bother Jade, because he is unreadable, but Mythra’s expression suggests she’s read him with the same ease she’d read her favorite book. Not even Peony is that obnoxious about it.

“And, hey,” Mythra says.

Jade sighs and braces himself for the worst.

“Even if my Jade’s a dick sometimes, he’s really not that bad,” Mythra continues, in the kind of tone that makes Jade wonder which Jade she’s talking about. “I know what bad drivers look like. I know what bad _people_ look like. Jade’s not one of them.”

Jade hums. He’s not going to give her the satisfaction of knowing her underhanded compliment landed; after all, it didn’t. It’s sweet that she cares. His mind hasn’t changed.

“Well, it’s good to hear that about your universe,” he says, and _but I don’t think it’s true about mine_ goes unsaid.

Mythra scowls like maybe she heard it anyway. Jade just finishes the last of his paperwork and gets to his feet before she has the time to say anything about it.

“Come on,” he says, nodding for her to follow as he moves towards the door.

Mythra gets to her feet, skeptical. “Where are we going?”

“I need to inform the Emperor of the situation; regarding both you and the other Jade.”

“…can’t I just stay here?”

“Your Jade may trust you, but I see no logical reason to leave a woman I have just met alone in the Emperor’s palace, where she is in perfect position to get herself in trouble, if not assassinate said Emperor.” Mythra opens her mouth to protest, but Jade cuts her off. “I’m sure your intentions are good. But I have no reason to believe that, _therefore,_ I’d prefer you stayed where I could see you.”

Mythra huffs. She doesn’t argue, but: “I forgot you can be kind of a bitch.”

Jade raises his eyebrows. “Really?”

“Normally you’re on my side, is all,” she grumbles.

She follows him without any other fussing, though.

…hopefully introducing her to Peony won’t be a mistake.

\- - -

The flight on the Albiore is projected to take somewhere around fifteen hours, which is incredible time, in Jade’s opinion. Of course they will probably stop for the night so the pilot (and the rest of them) can sleep, but it’s still much faster than Jade had anticipated reaching Mythra, and he finds a weight lifted off his shoulders, knowing that. The sooner he reaches her, the less time she has to cause some kind of national incident. ( _Which, given Grand Chokmah is apparently the capital of Malkuth—the country Jade has found himself in—is entirely probable._ )

( _He wonders what the odds are that she ended up with the other Jade. Probably high, given that he ended up with the other Jade’s friends._ )

Jade spends the first hour or so of the flight drilling Guy for whatever information he has on how the Albiore works. As he should; Aselia doesn’t have technology like this, or if it does, it’s not available to the public. Granted, neither is the Albiore, but still, Jade’s curious. About it, and about fontech, and any other technology that Auldrant has that Aselia doesn’t. ( _The verdict: not much new, just a lot of different names._ )

And once Jade is mostly satisfied with that—or rather, when everyone else looks like they’re about ready to pummel Guy if he says one more word about fontech, being polite to their guest or not—Jade asks after the current political climate. The more he understands about what he and Mythra are getting into, the better.

What he gets is not an answer, but a laugh.

It’s quiet, kind of startled, and immediately everyone is looking at Natalia, who is covering her mouth.

“Sorry,” she apologizes, blushing. “It’s only that, of all people I expected to hear that question from, I don’t think I ever imagined you being one of them.”

Jade’s face remains perfectly neutral, but his fists clench in his lap. He keeps very, very tight control on the ether he is outputting, because he doesn’t want to know what the Albiore would do if the cabin suddenly filled with ice ether.

“Well, I don’t know how I’m expected to know anything about your politics, given I’m from another world,” Jade says, smiling pleasantly. His core burns.

“That’s true…” Natalia admits.

“She’s right, though,” Anise adds, with a shrug she has to exaggerate. She’s sitting backwards in her seat, arms cushioning her chin so she can look at Jade. That’s probably very dangerous, but it’s not Jade’s place to tell her to not do that, so he hasn’t said anything. “The Colonel knows _everything._ All the time. About everything.” Here, she pouts. “Even personal stuff…”

“He’s just got a good eye,” Tear sighs.

“And being best friends with Emperor Peony probably helps him on the political front,” Guy adds, scratching nervously at his cheek.

Jade turns to look out the window. In the motion he catches sight of Ion: gripping his staff tightly, watching Jade with concern. Jade doesn’t want to see it.

“Guys, come on, can you stop?” Luke asks. Jade huffs. More intervention he doesn’t need; and he wishes he wasn’t so _obvious_ about being distressed. “He probably doesn’t like it any more than I did when you kept comparing me to the other Luke.”

That gets Jade to turn back to Luke, reassessing, recontextualizing. What other Luke? Wait, the replica thing, that they mentioned earlier… Jade wonders about it very strongly, but also notes that everyone else is looking surprised and somewhat guilty. If Luke was the only one who noticed Jade was on edge, he feels a little bit better, he supposes.

He also notes that Ion’s grip on his staff gets just a little bit tighter.

“Sorry,” Guy says, ducking his head down.

“That’s not what we meant,” Natalia agrees.

Tear and Anise don’t look quite as guilty, but neither do they look comfortable.

“I get that it’s been only a few hours, but maybe we can get through even just one conversation without comparing him to the other Jade?” Luke continues.

This is going to get into way more emotions and feelings than Jade frankly ever wants to deal with—ever, frankly, but certainly not with people he met three hours ago. Better nip it at the bud.

“I just want an idea of what your politics look like so I know what I’m walking into,” Jade says, to steer the conversation back on course.

As one everyone looks to Guy, as if he hadn’t just spent the past hour talking about fontech.

Or rather, everyone except Ion, who clears his throat.

“I’m probably the most qualified to talk about that,” he says, and he smiles—neutral, almost too neutral. “Let’s… start with Malkuth, since that’s where we’re headed.”


	3. Friends, it's a lifestyle

Mythra does what she can to map out the palace in her head as Jade leads her through it, because the last thing she wants to do is get _lost,_ but it’s clear to her pretty quick it’s a futile effort. Jade’s deliberately misleading her. They’ve definitely been down this hallway twice, she thinks. But fine, whatever. She can’t blame him for wanting to keep her a little floundering; like, she’s _not_ a threat, but he only has her word to believe and, well. Word means nothing from a stranger.

( _Hurts, a little, to think of him as that._

 _At least the resonance sings loud and clear with_ her _Jade, still alive, even if halfway across the planet from her. She sends him reassurance, fondness, the emotional equivalent of I-miss-you. It offsets the discomfort he’s been feeling—much better than the near blinding anger from earlier—and he sends her the emotional equivalent of the-sooner-this-is-over-the-better in return._

 _And also, a little bit of fondness. Mythra smiles to feel it._ )

Anyway _eventually_ they make it to what must be like, the throne room or whatever (Mythra knows nothing about palaces, actually, this is her first time in one) and the guards at the door don’t even blink at Jade, and subsequently neither do they blink at Mythra. That’s nice.

There’s a dude sitting on the throne—okay maybe she shouldn’t say dude, that’s probably the Emperor? He’s _young_ though, like… well, Mythra isn’t fantastic at human ages, but still. Way younger than she was picturing. He’s talking with some other—politicians, probably. There’s only two of them, a man and a woman, both about the age Mythra was actually expecting. The Emperor looks up immediately when the door opens, and he seems to light up when he realizes it’s Jade.

“Oh, Jade!” the Emperor calls. He even _sounds_ young, and… there’s something about how he says Jade’s name that makes Mythra nearly trip over her feet. She can’t think about it though because about then the Emperor’s attention is on her, and he’s gone from grinning to frowning in an instant. “Who’s she?”

Mythra wonders if she should bow, or something…? But Jade hasn’t. So. Mythra continues to not, though she fidgets a little with her hands at her sides.

“Matter of state security, Your Majesty,” Jade answers, and though his words are for the Emperor, his attention is on the politicians, and he’s doing the thing that makes it _really_ uncomfortable to exist under his gaze. Mythra lets herself feel smug, even if it’s not her Jade doing it. “If I may speak with you about it alone?”

“Of course,” the Emperor says, and he waves the other politicians off without so much as looking at them. Once they’re gone, he slouches in the throne, resting his elbow on one of the arms and his chin in his hand as he leans forward, attention fixed on Mythra. Hmm. That’s uncomfortable.

Jade clears his throat, and gestures towards the Emperor with the exact amount of effort he exerts when he couldn’t give more of a shit about what he’s doing because he’s simply out of shits. “May I present His Majesty, Emperor Peony IX,” he intones, bored, unimpressed. _Oh,_ it’s like _that_ , then?

“Yo,” Peony says, raising the hand he isn’t leaning on to wave.

“Peony, this is Mythra,” Jade says, nodding at her.

Well okay she just got greeted with a _yo_ and Jade isn’t taking this seriously at all, so: “Yo,” Mythra says back, returning Peony’s wave.

Peony laughs, bright, leaning back for a moment with the force of it. When he recovers, he smirks at Mythra. “And what’s a pretty young lady like yourself doing here, anyway?” he—Architect, did he just flirt with her? Except Peony immediately turns to Jade and follows it up with: “Jade, she’s not even your type.”

Jade coughs, unamused.

“ _Gross,_ ” Mythra spits, at the notion.

It nets her an eyebrow-raise from Peony, but he must decide not to ask, because instead he turns his attention to Jade. “Anyway, you said it was a matter of state security?”

“Mm, something of the sort,” Jade says. “Mythra, you explain.”

“Wh,” Mythra splutters, startled. “Me?”

“Why else did I bring you here?”

“’Cause you didn’t trust me to leave me alone??”

Peony raises his eyebrows, interested. “Ooh, and why not?”

Mythra glares at him, half-hearted, and then moreso at Jade. It doesn’t work nearly as well on him as she’d like. He just sniffs and adjusts his glasses, not looking at her. Ugh, fine.

“What bits?”

“Everything you told me should do.”

Mythra opens her mouth to protest that, but then Jade seems to realize the same thing she did.

“The relevant bits, anyway,” he clarifies. “You don’t need to lecture His Majesty, and I’m sure he wouldn’t be nearly as interested.”

Right so, just the basics, and don’t spend an hour talking about how blades work unless Peony asks. Got it. Mythra clears her throat, still kind of uncomfortable and not entirely sure where to start, but:

“Uh, so I’m from another world? I don’t really know how I got here, but it was absolutely an accident.”

“Uh-huh,” Peony says, squinting like maybe he’s not sure he believes her, but also by this point his eyes are trailing over her ether lines and core crystal.

“I’d like to figure out how to get home but more importantly I need to find my Jade.”

Peony sits up a little straighter.

“ _Your_ Jade?” he repeats.

Mythra nods. “Yeah,” she says. “He’s, uh,” she _could_ say driver, but then she has to explain blades, and Jade told her to stick to the basics. Her exact relationship to her Jade probably doesn’t matter to Peony; “He’s my best friend, and this Jade,” she jerks her thumb at him, “mentioned that it’d probably be bad if there were two Jades running around on this world. I know my Jade’s gonna fucking hate it, too.”

Like, he’s gonna be fine, Mythra thinks. She has faith in him. But it’s _hard_ being apart, and the emotion bleed from him hasn’t felt this gross since Mythra doesn’t even remember exactly when, it’s been so long, and he hates being recognized by people he doesn’t know… of course he does. Mythra would too, if she were him.

He _should_ be fine, but she knows if they can just see each other he’ll be less stressed, and obviously she wants that for him.

And like, probably she should be worried about him causing trouble by being Jade in a world that already has a Jade, but. Whatever. That’s lower on the list of priorities, in Mythra’s opinion.

“Our utmost priority is finding him,” Jade continues, in the silence Mythra left. “Or rather, wait until Luke delivers him to us, because I’m quite certain he is with Luke and on his way.” Peony doesn’t question Jade’s certainty, which is nice, because if he had then Mythra _would_ have had to explain some of the blade stuff. “But I wanted you to know so that you wouldn’t think I’d performed fomicry on myself, and also because this will require my attention for the next few days.”

Mythra bristles at Jade’s tone as he says the latter bit. It… probably isn’t the same as…

“Oh yeah, I’m not keeping you,” Peony says, with an unbothered wave of his hand, and Mythra relaxes a little. That seems friendly enough. ( _It’s nothing at all like Citan’s condescending raise of eyebrows, a silent how-dare-you-waste-my-time conveyed, Jade digging in his heels but having to concede ground more times than he won it—_ ) “Even if we hadn’t cleaned up the latest emergency, I would have cleared you to go. Two Jades is a pretty serious problem. Or…” Peony smirks. “Should I say three Jades?”

To Mythra’s surprise, Jade immediately reacts with _frustration._

“Leave the rappig out of this, its name is not Jade—”

“ _I_ named it.”

“And you shouldn’t use the names of people you know to name your pets.”

“Aww, I wonder how my cute little Jade is doing, anyway,” Peony says, like he hadn’t heard Jade. He gets to his feet. “I should go check on him.”

“Your Majesty, perhaps not when we have guests?” Jade says, pinching the bridge of his nose.

It’s… the same frustrated fondness that he gives her a lot of the time, actually, Mythra realizes, and then it clicks into place. This is a joke. This is like the _second worst driver_ mug, the way she teases Jade about Malik, the way she bugs him in the middle of his work just because he hates being interrupted ( _even though he really needs to be, sometimes_ ). …next time they get a stray cat that hangs around the bar again, Mythra’s gonna call it Jade, just to see what happens.

“Rappigs?” Mythra asks. “I don’t think we have those on our world.”

Peony fakes offense. “Oh, then you absolutely have to meet them,” he insists. Jade starts to protest again, but Peony taps the back of his hand against Jade’s chest, grinning up at him. “C’mon, she said she’s your _best friend,_ right? I think that makes her a little more than a guest.”

“She’s not _my_ friend,” Jade protests, and that hits close enough to home that Mythra sobers.

“ _Another_ Jade’s friend,” she agrees. By this point Peony is walking, and she follows. Jade does a second later. “But—What about you, uh, Your Majesty?” Is she doing that right. “Are you and Jade… friends?”

They seem like friends. Or maybe something sliding a little more romantic? It’s hard to say, but Mythra’s mostly just fishing, double checking… Like, it _can’t_ be like Citan. It _can’t._ She knows how Jade acts around someone he despises and the way he acts around Peony has none of that tension, that cold fury. He seems to have no patience for Peony but that’s not like, _weird._ And surely even if he and Peony aren’t _close,_ it can’t—it can’t be that bad. Mythra knows what bad looks like, and it’s not like this.

“The Emperor shouldn’t stoop to such nepotism—” Jade begins, but Peony speaks over him:

“Oh we went to school together as kids,” he says, and continues, “and we’ve been pretty close since then, despite the rocky patches.” He flashes Mythra a grin. “I’m the only reason he’s still alive, if we’re being honest.”

Mythra thinks about earlier, when she asked if Jade had someone in his life to keep him from getting full of himself and he said yes. Chances are she just met his person.

But also, Jade… He doesn’t stop walking, but his tone _is_ somewhat clipped when he says:

“Peony, that’s not yours to share.”

He’s… actually mad, huh?

Peony just laughs, easy. “What? It’s just a little honesty between friends—”

“She may claim to be my friend, but we have no way of knowing,” Jade counters, as if he didn’t listen to her talk about blades for _a literal hour,_ but… That’s not the point, here. The point is Peony has crossed a line he maybe shouldn’t have. Mythra doesn’t know the context, Mythra doesn’t know the line, but she knows Jade is upset, so.

“Yeah, but I didn’t ask,” she protests, no-nonsense. “I only asked if you were friends, not your whole story. That’s none of my business.”

Peony stops long enough to consider her.

“…you really are his friend,” he comments.

“Yeah,” she says, eyes narrowed. “I wouldn’t lie about that.”

She and Jade have been through _too much_ for her to lie about how much she loves him.

But, the tension in the room right now is getting kind of too thick for comfort, so she tacks on:

“I mean, he’s a jerk, you know? I wouldn’t say I liked him if I didn’t mean it.”

It works. Peony laughs, and Jade—Jade sighs and rolls his eyes, exasperated, and Mythra’s core sings at the sound because that means he’s _fond_ and- and it’s not her Jade but she’ll take the victory, anyway.

Also, it turns out Peony stopped not just to look at Mythra, but also because they arrived at a door and Mythra was too busy being worried about Jade to pay attention. Figures.

Anyway Peony throws the door to the room open now.

It looks like someone’s bedroom got crossed with a pigsty—which, given the literal actual _pigs_ that seem to be roaming about, maybe that was intentional? Also “room” is a kind of humble way to put it; there’s a whole _suite_ in here, done up in all the blues and whites of the rest of the palace. Damn, she got invited into an Emperor’s _personal suite._ Look at her! She’s moving up in the world!

One of the pigs comes up to her and sniffs at her leg. Its nose is wet and she _does_ jolt away from it but she _doesn’t_ yelp, absolutely not.

“Oh, Jade likes you,” Peony says, while Jade groans.

…well, if it’s for the sake of teasing Jade.

“This one’s Jade, huh?” Mythra asks, squatting down to take a better look at it. Are those… bunny ears…? Oh. Oh, she gets it. Rabbit pigs. Rappigs. She reaches out tentatively to, she doesn’t know, scratch its ears, or something? It immediately kind of pushes its head up to meet her hand. …okay, that’s _almost_ cute. The fur is way softer than she was expecting, too. “You know, I can see the resemblance,” she jokes.

“ _Please_ don’t encourage him,” Jade says, but it’s too hot to be real anger from him.

“Why not?” Mythra asks, looking up, just to watch the suffering way Jade glares at her. “He’s just as needy as you are. Cute, too.”

Jade doesn’t say anything, but he _does_ pinch the bridge of his nose like he’s a second away from losing it. Success.

Peony laughs nice and loud, which is also satisfying. And then he’s introducing her to the rest of the rappigs and Mythra learns five more names that, like, she absolutely is not going to remember by tomorrow. And she _definitely_ isn’t going to be able to tell which one is which. She’s already lost track of Rappig Jade.

If she made more of an effort to remember the names, it’d probably make Peony happy, but also at this point she notices Jade’s staring at her. His expression has gone from I-was-just-being-teased-and-I-hate-it to… calculating. He’s definitely trying to glean some kind of information out her right now. Huh. She wonders what he wants.

“What’s that look for?” she asks. She could extricate herself from the rappigs, but if she’s on the floor with them no one’s going to give her shit about being on the floor, and then she’d have to like ask Peony if she can fucking sit somewhere? She’ll take the pigs.

“You don’t recognize any of those names?” Jade asks, still watching her.

“What?” Mythra says, not following for a second. She realizes he means the rappigs. “Oh, no.” She tilts her head to the side. “Should I?”

Jade fiddles with his glasses—the side of them, rather than shoving them back up his nose. “His Majesty is very terrible with names…”

“Hey!”

“…so of course they are all named after someone we’re both acquainted with,” Jade continues, despite Peony’s protest. Mythra swears he hasn’t even blinked as he stares at her. “None of them rang any bells?”

She shrugs, unbothered, though she understands why he’s curious. “Nope,” she says.

Now Peony looks interested, and confused. “Wait, I can understand not recognizing Luke, or Aslan,” he says, “but not even Saphir? Nephry?”

Mythra shakes her head no. “Who are they?”

Peony explains before Jade can, though Jade probably prefers it that way. “Saphir was another childhood friend of ours,” Peony says.

“He’s an idiot, and he was never my friend,” Jade interjects—in the kind of tone that still is too warm to be legitimate anger from him. He’s definitely colder than he was with Peony, sure, but… Mythra tucks this away to bug him about later.

“We went to school together,” Peony says, which Jade doesn’t argue. “And Nephry is Jade’s sister.”

Mythra reels hard enough at the notion that she upsets one of the rappigs. “ _Sister!?_ ”

“I suppose if we’re estranged in your world, I’m not surprised,” Jade says, and it’s not quite nervous but neither does he sound like he _enjoys_ the notion. “It’s not like we’ve really talked in years.”

“You should,” Mythra tells him, before she’s thinking about it. If she had the chance to talk to her siblings—if she could even _find them again—_

( _Okay she knows roughly where Alvis is but he doesn’t count._ )

“You should tell your Jade that,” Jade interrupts her thoughts.

Oh.

Oh, Architect, does he even _have_ a sister, back home? Sibling blades _are_ a thing, they’re just so often separated because the blade system fucking sucks—

( _She never even got to see Pyra or Malos before they were taken—_ )

—so it’s a very real possibility that Nephry is out there, somewhere, blade of someone they don’t know, with no real idea that she has a brother or that Jade exists, the same way Jade has no idea about her.

They’ll have to check, see if they can find her.

( _It’s also a very real possibility that she’s not his sister in the way that blades are siblings; she could have just as well been a driver he knew in a previous lifetime. The same could be said of any of these other names, these other people, of even Peony._

 _They don’t know how long Jade’s been around. It could have easily been centuries before Citan got his hands on him._ )

“I mean,” Jade continues, into her silence, “seeing as he hasn’t even told you he has a sister, I presume they aren’t talking, either.”

“It’s- he might not even have one,” Mythra protests, frustrated. The differences between their worlds are already stark and—she’s so so _so_ mad about the blade system and the concept of fucking _military rotation_ and if Jade was in that before Citan found him then why not Nephry—“It’s not like everything is the same between our worlds!”

“And he could have just chosen not to tell you,” Jade counters.

Mythra’s honestly offended by the implication that Jade would _lie to her,_ and also knows better because—no, she isn’t going to say Jade’s a blade, but _Jade’s a blade,_ and given Citan’s fucking bullshit on top of the blade system—“If he has a sister he literally had no way of knowing about it,” she spits, defending him without thinking, just like she always has.

“Really?” the Jade in front of her raises his eyebrows, intrigued, in the way that means she gave him way more information than she meant to with just that sentence but—ugh, whatever. They have an old excuse in place for basically exactly this, so:

“I mean it’s not like he remembers any of his childhood,” Mythra says. Amnesia. Convenient reason to not need to pretend you know how human childhoods work.

Jade blinks. Peony groans; more tired than upset.

“If someone finds him they’re _really_ going to think he’s a replica,” Peony says. And that’s, okay, Mythra wants to ask about that, but before she can:

“You’re saying he has amnesia?” Jade asks.

“Yeah.”

“How…” Jade begins, frowning. He’s definitely fishing for information before he decides he believes her or not. It’s a good thing Mythra couldn’t care less about whether or not he believes her—just getting him to shut up. And, you know, maybe not be a dick to her Jade about things he’s not guilty of or has any control over. “How did he forget?”

Mythra shrugs. “It was before I met him,” she says, which is the absolute truth. She does what she can to keep her anger in check. ( _It’s hard. She’s thought more about Citan in the past hour than she’s thought about him in_ years.)

“And he doesn’t know?”

“I mean, that’s the thing about amnesia, isn’t it?” Mythra jokes, sharp. “You don’t _remember._ ”

( _Her own hand, trembling,_

_Please don’t let this get to five tallies, Jade, please,)_

There’s a ping in the emotion bleed from Jade; concern whistled cautiously at her. Mythra breathes slowly and carefully, trying to get the storm in her core in check. She feels bad sending all this shit his way, but the other option is stifling the emotion bleed completely and—yeah, no, that’s not actually an option. (Just thinking about it makes her sick.) So she breathes, pets a rappig, and tries not to be _too_ obvious about all the ether she’s throwing around because she’s stressed.

(She also tries to send Jade the emotional equivalent of an apology. She gets back that steady concern in return, which… helps a lot, actually.)

“How did you and Jade meet, anyway?” Peony asks. He’s lounging in one of his chairs, a rappig in his lap. Yeah, Mythra absolutely doesn’t know which one. …she kind of appreciates Peony changing the subject. Did he do that on purpose? If he did, Mythra loves him.

Also: Jade’s still standing at this point, but it looks like he’s just standing to be an ass; wanting to be contrary, not wanting to look like he’s interested, wanting to have the option of an easy route out. Could be any one of those things, with Jade. Or all of them.

Anyway, Peony’s question. “Coworkers,” Mythra answers, and then a second later realizes _she is in an alternate universe where Tethe’alla doesn’t exist._ “Oh, shit, I don’t have to lie about this one either,” she laughs.

“Do you normally?” Jade says. He’s judging her. Well, let him.

“Yeah, uh, we were both on the same top-secret, government-funded research project that turned out to be _wildly_ unethical,” Mythra explains, still kind of laughing. “Working conditions were shit, too, so we booked it.”

“Booked it?” Peony repeats.

Mythra shrugs. “Quit, got fired, depends on who you asked.”

“And they let you go?”

“Why do you think I normally have to lie about this.”

Peony makes a face like he understands that answer, which makes sense, given: _emperor._ …shit, Mythra hopes she didn’t offend him, somehow. But like. Come on. Unethical and horrible working conditions are usually enough to get any _sensible_ person—politician or no—to agree that she and Jade were in the right to leave, and if it’s not enough for Peony, she can be a _little_ more open about it, maybe. She’ll cross that bridge if they get there.

“And after you left,” Jade presses, watching her like she’s a puzzle and, okay, she hates that a little but. She only has to put up with it like another day? She can deal. “You said your Jade became an _accountant_?”

Peony _snrk_ s. Mythra rolls her eyes at them both.

“How easy do you think it is to get a job in a military state when you’re on the military’s shit-list,” she asks.

Jade smiles. “Oh, I imagine it’s much harder when you weren’t childhood friends with the emperor,” he says.

“ _Exactly._ ”

“Why not move to another country?”

“Requires forging paperwork,” Mythra answers, with the kind of disinterested smile that could probably rival Jade’s when paired with a statement like that. It’s more fun to be unsettling about this, though. “Can’t buy property in Sylvarant if you aren’t a citizen, and having worked with Tethe’alla’s military blacklists us.” And also, like, the Jade-being-a-flesh-eater thing, but they’ve still got enough of Citan’s money they could pay someone to turn a blind eye to that. Or forge paperwork for them. But: “The bar’s fine, though, we don’t really have any intention of moving.”

Jade raises his eyebrows, ever-so-slightly. “I’m sorry, did I just hear you say the version of me in your universe is an accountant for a _bar_.”

“I don’t know, kind of suits you,” Peony says, earning him a glare that he just laughs off.

Mythra laughs a little, too. “Our friend runs it,” she explains, though if she called Malik Jade’s _partner_ it wouldn’t be wrong, either, regardless of the pace they’re moving at. “He’s letting us stay for free, but Jade does the accounting to keep himself busy and because the fact Malik wasn’t in debt before we got there is definitely some kind of miracle.”

(Okay, that’s a little mean, and a little untrue, but it’s also a longstanding joke of an argument between Jade and Malik and _of course_ Mythra takes Jade’s side on that one.)

(…also, neither of them really reacted to the name Malik at all. She… doesn’t know how to feel about that.)

“Still,” Jade says, looking like he doesn’t quite believe her. “I find it hard to imagine myself being satisfied being an accountant, of all things.” Mythra’d complain about him questioning, but he just seems baffled—and if anyone’s going to understand the itch in Jade’s core to be _doing_ something or _learning_ something… it’d be Jade, huh?

So: “Remember what I said about illicit core chips and memory patches,” Mythra begins, and only has to say that much before she sees it click in Jade’s head.

“Oh, the bar’s a front.”

“Bar’s a front!”

“I’m lost,” Peony says, but he also immediately leans over to beckon at Jade, rolling his head enough to look up at him. “Explain that leap of logic, would you.”

“Helping people out of trouble in the means they have to them, I think,” Jade says. Something about his tone gives Mythra the impression that if Peony was any closer to Jade he would have gotten shoved, despite the fact that Jade’s expression hasn’t changed at all.

“Exactly that,” Mythra agrees.

“Ah,” Peony says, satisfied. He straightens, rolls his shoulders. “How long did you say before the other Jade gets here?” he asks. “Do we have an estimate?”

“’Bout twelve hours,” Mythra answers automatically. Aw shit, she hopes Peony doesn’t ask how she knows that.

“Ah, that reminds me,” Jade says, saving her, whether he meant to or not. Thanks Jade. “I need to inform the guards to hold Luke and his party at the gate when they arrive. Mythra.”

Mythra blinks up at him. “What?” she says, then realizes _oh,_ he wants her to come _with_. …she sure does have a rappig in her lap, though.

“You can leave her here,” Peony suggests.

“If I move I’ll upset the rappig,” Mythra adds.

“Ha ha,” Jade says. “ _No._ ”

It’s… still kind of scary how quickly he can make his face go from laughing to serious like that. And also means she’s not getting out of this—Mythra knows him well. She groans, all dramatics, and picks the rappig off her lap and sets it gently down amongst its friends so she can get up. It’s weird, though. Having a Jade who doesn’t trust her.

“Don’t feel bad, I’m sure he just doesn’t want to leave us alone because we’ll talk dirt about him the moment he’s out of earshot,” Peony tells Mythra as she stands. And okay, that _does_ make her feel a little better, actually.

“Don’t worry, I’ll get you some dirt later,” Mythra declares, proudly, as Peony grins.

“Sounds like a date—”

“Don’t you dare,” Jade interjects. …still too warm to be legitimate anger, Jade, you aren’t fooling Mythra. “After you,” he says, and only moves for the door when Mythra does.

Well, it’s not the worst house arrest she’s been on.


	4. snow and ice piles everywhere

“Noelle?” Guy asks, looking over her shoulder. Holding the back of Ion’s chair is the only way he’s standing without falling over.

“I know,” Noelle says. “As soon as we aren’t over the water, I’ll land.”

“Is something wrong?” Natalia asks.

“Can’t you feel this flight?” Guy snaps back.

“Engine trouble of some sort,” Noelle answers, distracted. She’s busy adjusting their course so they can land sooner, seeing as the straight shot she’d been taking to Grand Chokmah was primarily over water.

Anise exaggerates a shiver, though her eyes are on Ion, who is hugging himself tighter than normal. “Why is it so _cold_?” Anise demands, whining extra to get attention. There’s always some chill, with the altitude, but never anything like this, not this far from Keterburg.

“Do you think…?” Tear begins, turning towards their guest, the man named Jade who wears his face but has no memory of them, no knowledge of this world, and claims to be from another. He’s asleep, right now, dozed off with his head against the window. There’s a thin layer of frost forming on the glass.

Her question—about whether or not this is his doing—is forgotten the moment she really looks at him. The expression on his face is pained. A nightmare…?

“Maybe we should wake him,” Luke wonders, eyes also fixed on Jade.

The Albiore shudders, throwing them all back against their seats, except Guy, who just staggers where he stands. Jade, somehow, remains asleep.

“Noelle,” Guy says.

“I’m working on it.”

“Jade?” Luke calls. No response.

Luke gets up, bracing himself on Natalia’s seat. He reaches towards Jade—

“No!” Tear grabs him, pulls him back.

“What— _hey!_ ” Luke protests, shoving her away. The Albiore bucks again. Luke yelps but keeps upright. Tear sits back down. “We need to wake him up—”

“If you startle him you’ll just get stabbed,” Tear counters, having plenty of horror stories from the Oracle Knight barracks, soldiers of all ages reflexively attacking when woken abruptly from a nightmare. Definitely better not to try that on the man who can summon his spear at will.

“But!”

The Albiore shudders, drops, steadies out in a clumsy glide.

“Noelle!”

“Hang on!”

The ground comes up much faster than it should.

\- - -

Jade jumps out of the Albiore the moment its doors are open, not waiting for the ladder. His passive healing might not be anywhere near what it used to be, but his body is still sturdy enough to take a drop like that. The rest from there is a blur. His stolen heart beats too fast, off-sync with the pulse of his core. He can’t breathe right. His vision is blurring at the edges. Panic claws up his throat, rage stirring in his blood.

He does not think about the Albiore, the people he was traveling with, other than that he doesn’t want to finish this panic attack where they can see it. Mythra is still three thousand miles away. Malik isn’t here. It’s just Jade and a bunch of people he doesn’t know that are going to want to help him anyway, and—

He walks. He thinks about nothing but the walking. He counts it a blessing that the nightmare is slipping away from conscious memory. Architect, it’s been—how long? How long, since…?

( _Breathe, Jade,_ whispers Malik’s voice, in his mind. _Find something to ground yourself._ )

Well unless he wants to sit and count blades of grass!

No, it’s fine, walking probably does him just as much good. He can count his steps, if he really wants to distract his mind. He might have to stop and give his lungs a reprieve in a few minutes, but—

A rustling, in the bushes.

Jade spins, spear ready, and hesitates just long enough that he can see—ah, a monster. Since the panic in his core has shifted more towards rage, that will do. His blood is already so full of adrenaline, anyway. Might as well put it to some use.

There’s more than one monster. They’re significantly more aggressive than they are back home, as well. Not that he’d feel much remorse, to be honest, whether they were or weren’t. It gives him something to do.

The blind, mechanical destruction only falters when he hears a voice. Jade turns to see that Tear has joined him—she’s… singing? But the ether of this world or… fonons. Fonons gather around her, and then release in an arte that lays waste to a monster. Interesting. But more importantly, Tear doesn’t ask him any questions. She just helps him keep the monsters off his back as he fights. Good.

(He’d ask why she’s here, but he doesn’t need to. Of course someone followed after him. He’s not _supposed_ to be alone in this world.)

At some point, later, the monsters stop. And Jade’s core feels settled enough that he doesn’t see the point in hunting any more out, so he just stops and catches his breath. If he holds his spear for longer than he needs to, fingers running over the cool shaft just for the comfort of it, what of it? The ground is still covered in patches of ice from Jade’s artes. If he cared, he might try and clean up, but he doesn’t care. Ice melts.

Tear studies him carefully from where she stands, some three feet away. Jade raises his eyebrows at her, inviting her to speak if she wants to. Of course, he’ll shut down any questions she asks, but better to get it over with.

She doesn’t ask any questions, though. Or not any that he’s dreading.

She just takes a step towards him and asks: “Are you hurt?”

Jade blinks, realizes she’s asking about whether or not he was _physically_ hurt, remembers what they told him about healers in this world. Tear is one. It makes sense for her to be asking.

He is hurt, actually. Which Tear seems to be well aware of, seeing as her gaze is fixed on his bleeding arm. ( _There’s just enough adrenaline still in him that he didn’t quite notice the pain._ ) “Ah,” he says, lifting his arm to look at it, dismissing his spear as he does. He pretends like he’s surprised. “I suppose I am.”

Tear takes another step towards him. “I… can heal you, if you wouldn’t mind,” she says, cautious.

“I would be rather grateful, actually,” Jade answers, offering his arm out to her. His passive healing is slow enough now that in the lack of a healer, he’d have to bandage a wound like this. He thinks it for the best that his ether is red, also—though the way he bleeds, upon close inspection, certainly wouldn’t pass for blood.

Of course, blades _normally_ bleed in a fashion of released ether dissipating the moment it makes contact with the air. Jade, however, has too much blood with his ether for it to do anything but be a liquid.

All this to say Tear doesn’t really comment ( _though if he were bleeding in a fashion that would make her comment, he also wouldn’t really need the healing, given how rapid a normal blade’s passive healing is_ ), she simply holds out her hand towards Jade’s arm, and there’s a glow of green light. She hums, ever so slightly, as the arte settles into Jade and knits his skin back together—a tune to help casting, perhaps? More interesting is the way the arte sings in Jade’s veins. He feels it in his core, a frequency that calls to the place where he keeps his resonances, that plucks at the string tying him to Mythra…

( _Ah, speaking of Mythra, the emotion bleed sings of tight concern and something restless. Jade passes her reassurance that he is alright—now that he is of the presence of mind to do so—and ties it off with something somewhat longing. This is an awful long time to spend away from each other, especially when they weren’t planning on it, especially with so many bad memories being dredged up. He hopes she is faring better than he is._ )

Tear’s arte ends, Jade healed. She’s frowning—not quite at him, but definitely troubled. Did she feel what he did, just now? That sensation of two frequencies resonating where Jade imagines they shouldn’t have?

Instead, Tear begins: “Your heart…” but can’t quite seem to finish the sentence, her words painted with uncertainty.

That’s fair. “What about it?” Jade asks, though he knows perfectly well _what about it,_ it’s just Tear doesn’t, nor should she have reason to.

“Is that…” Tear frowns even deeper, considering her words. “Is that normal?”

“For me, yes.” For other blades, certainly not.

“Oh,” Tear says, and relaxes.

“I suppose we should be heading back to the Albiore,” Jade comments, turning until he spots it. They are quite a ways away, of course, but the Albiore is just large enough and the surrounding area just flat enough that it’s not hard to make it out.

“We can take our time,” Tear says, her tone a little sharper. With… concern, Jade notices, after a moment.

“I don’t suspect they’ll be wanting to wait for us,” Jade counters.

“I imagine it will take Noelle a little longer to figure out what went wrong with the engine.”

Jade sighs. That’s enough of playing this game. “If you’re worried about me, don’t be, I’m alright,” he tells her, and it’s not a lie. “I appreciate your concern, but it’s unnecessary.”

Tear blushes, ducks her head away. When she stammers her excuse, it’s with the same bluster Mythra always does, though her tone is softer than Mythra’s ever is in moments like these: “It’s not- I just didn’t want to leave you alone. This is a world you are unfamiliar with, after all.”

She’s not fooling him. She was definitely concerned about more than just that.

But she has at least the sense not to press him. If she was worried about his nightmare—loath as he is to think of anyone witnessing it—she isn’t saying. She just looks at him with understanding, and keeps her mouth shut. Good for her. He appreciates that more than if she’d tried to say anything, to be quite honest.

“Still, we should head back,” Jade says, because he really is ready to. He appreciates Tear’s not-so-subtle insistence he should take time; or maybe she was just trying to make it clear she wouldn’t begrudge him if he spent another few minutes composing himself.

Still, he doesn’t need to. Whether it counts as a “healthy” coping mechanism or not, slaughtering monsters certainly did wonders for his mood. Something about giving one’s mind an actual threat to combat, instead of imagined one, perhaps.

So, back to the Albiore they go.

Unfortunately the good mood lasts about until Noelle informs them that the Albiore’s engine appears to have mysteriously frozen solid. The news makes a shame settle into Jade’s core that is so crisp it earns him a flare of concern in the emotion bleed from Mythra’s end, but he smiles pleasantly to his traveling companions and tells them that he can fix that. Not an inch of his shame shows on his face. Neither does his returning frustration.

Bad news always seems to come in threes, as well. Though the engine is unfrozen without difficulty—Jade knows how to reverse a flow of frozen ether without having to resort to letting such a thing _thaw_ —the sudden landing caused a few other damages that Noelle will have to repair before they move again. At least there’s apparently a military post close enough by that Luke and Natalia are certain they can be there and back before it’s too late at night, so they can send their Jade a message; and hopefully with him, Mythra.

“I don’t know where she is, but our Jade can probably hunt her down if she’s in Malkuth, if you’re worried about her,” Luke offers, scratching at his ear like he’s nervous, but otherwise completely genuine.

It’s not _ideal,_ but then, seeing as Mythra hasn’t moved significantly in all their time here, she must have a reason to stay put—or worse. ( _It wouldn’t be the first time she got arrested._ ) So: “Yes, if you want to tell him to look,” he says, and gives a brief description of Mythra.

“Would you like to send a message to her, when he finds her?” Natalia asks.

…he would, actually. “Yes,” he says. “Let me think.”

They wait patiently for him to make up his mind.

“‘Forecast: light snow, no blizzard. Hoping for sunshine in the next few days,’” Jade finally settles on: several inside jokes and layers of code wrapped into one. “Those words exactly,” he insists, when Luke blinks at him.

Natalia looks like she wants to say she expected as much, which Jade politely ignores. Luke just exhales slowly.

“Let me get a piece of paper to write that down.”

\- - -

“Are you done?” Jade calls, across the training grounds and the three (three!) training dummies that Mythra has absolutely torn to pieces. “Feeling better?”

She exhales loud enough he can hear it across the distance, then dismisses that blinding sword of glimmering gold that she summoned to do her destruction to begin with. She makes her way towards him, glaring like she’s thinking idly about punching him.

“Fuck off,” she says, a little hoarse. She doesn’t look at him directly once she’s close enough to stop. “We can go back now. I’m fine.”

Jade doesn’t move, just adjusts his glasses, smiling. “You know, I should thank you. I really appreciated the up-close demonstration on how blades fight.”

Mythra _does_ actually shove him for that. Not that he’s really anything other than intrigued about it; is she that mad, or is she just like this with her Jade? The force behind the shove was minimal. “Stop making fun of me,” she spits. It’s significantly colder than the heat of her anger—or was that panic?—that slaughtered all these poor training dummies.

“You really can feel each other’s emotions, then,” he comments, while she’s still off-kilter. “I almost thought you were pulling my leg.”

“I-” Mythra splutters, _definitely_ off-kilter. “That- literally _what_ does that have to do with anything!” …flustered, but not enough to give away information. Perhaps she’s used to this from him. Well, he supposes it’s not any of his business which of them was having the panic attack. That is private, after all.

“Feeling better?” he repeats, because he’s not moving from this spot until she tells him he is.

“Yeah,” she says, and it’s softer. And then, quiet: “He’s… stopped moving, though. He’s not getting any closer.”

“Well,” Jade sends a look at the setting sun. “It would make sense if they wanted to stop and rest for the night. The Albiore may be fast, but its pilot needs her rest.” Jade approves of the decision. He doesn’t like waiting longer than he has to, no, but this matter is not serious enough to warrant pushing Noelle that far. And neither does he really enjoy the idea of meeting his otherworldly doppelganger at three in the morning, now that he’s thinking about it.

Mythra twitches; clearly she doesn’t like the answer even if she isn’t complaining about the sense of it. …it really does make Jade wonder whether it was her or her Jade who had a panic reaction strong enough to force Mythra out here to burn off her worry as she did. It’s none of his business, but if the other Jade is in danger of some sort…

“Mythra, forgive me for being frank,” he says. “But you don’t think your Jade is in danger, do you? Because if so, we’ll have to take significantly different actions.”

Mythra breathes, long and slow. She’s still not really looking at him.

“No,” she answers, after some hesitation. “I think he’s okay.”

That’s what Jade expected, truthfully. He’s only known her a few hours, but he knows her type. If her Jade _had_ been in danger, she would have rushed out of the palace, likely carving through every person who tried to stop her with little remorse. People are very, very stupid when someone they love is in danger.

( _He wonders, with all his morbid curiosity, whether or not blades are stupider for their drivers, and whether or not that it’s a good thing. He doesn’t quite think it is._ )

Anyway, Jade isn’t cruel enough to be needlessly contrary over something that clearly matters to Mythra, and is fairly important besides, so:

“If they haven’t begun moving by morning, or we haven’t heard any news, we can go looking,” he tells her. “Seeing as you two seem to have a homing beacon on each other, it shouldn’t be difficult to meet somewhere in the middle.”

Mythra looks up at him, first startled, but—she has an amazing control of her expressions, actually. She replaces the surprise with something wry so fast that had he been anyone else, Jade might have missed the surprise. “Y’sure that’s not gonna mess up any big plans you had for tomorrow? I’m sure someone as important as the Emperor’s _best friend_ had plenty of those. Gotta squeeze in five hours of playing with rappigs, you know.”

Jade raises his eyebrows, startled for half a second, which is half a second more than he’d like to be startled. He manages to keep forgetting she’s _friends_ with another Jade, which means she teases him with all the confidence of someone who doesn’t expect serious retaliation. It’s quite unfortunate. He’ll be glad to be rid of her.

Especially since none of his typical remarks would unsettle her at all. Quite unfortunate, indeed.

“Oh? I didn’t know you had grown so attached to them,” Jade tries instead, pretending to have misheard her. “I’ll have to warn Peony to keep watch; otherwise one excitable girl might steal off with his rappigs in the night.”

“Ha!” Mythra barks, unbothered. “Yeah, except I’ll tell him I’m just stealing them to hide them in your room. I’m sure he’d be happy to lend a hand!”

Damn, she really is friends with him. He doesn’t even bother saying something horrible might happen to the rappigs if such a thing were to happen; Mythra saw him and Peony interact, she’ll know he doesn’t mean it. He’s not going to even have the pleasure of the last word here, is he? Nothing left but a tactical subject change.

“I suppose it’s getting late, isn’t it?” he says, with a pointed glance towards the setting sun. “We should find you somewhere to sleep. It wouldn’t do to simply shove you in a supply closet.”

Mythra glares at him, but it’s… fond, in a fashion. Jade tries not to think about how uncomfortable that is. “Oh, come on,” she scoffs, arms folded over her chest, but try as she might not to smile she is. “Your sense of humor sucks.”

Jade nods for her to follow; she does.

“And, really, you don’t have to,” Mythra says as they walk. “I think I’m too keyed up to sleep, y’know? I can just like, crash on your couch if I actually get tired.” She says it all so casually, but then realizes herself before Jade can even comment. “I mean, uh, unless that’s weird for you? I guess you don’t even know me, so…”

Jade shrugs. He’s been forced to share a bed at an inn with a rotating group of teenagers for the past handful of months. He can deal with Mythra sleeping on his couch. “It _would_ put you where I can keep an eye on you,” he says.

“Great,” Mythra answers, in the kind of tone that implies she doesn’t think it great at all. “I hate that that sounds like a threat!”

Jade just turns to send her his most dangerous smile, under which she _actually_ shudders, before she glares and turns her attention away from him. Point to Jade, after all.

( _It speaks well, actually, that the only thing he could do to unsettle her was toss a joking threat her way. It means she isn’t used to receiving threats from him, joking or otherwise. He awards the other Jade a little more of his faith, that in mind._ )

And if they spend significantly more time comparing notes about the differences between their worlds that night instead of sleeping, well, what of it? Mythra seemed like she could have used the distraction.

\- - -

In the morning Jade receives the report that the Albiore had to make an emergency landing somewhere not far south of Theor Forest. The report implies that they’ll communicate further with how long they anticipate being delayed once they can better assess the damage in the morning which… Jade can’t fault them for. They may have to meet in the middle, after all, though the forest will make that difficult. Perhaps at the northern border? He also needs to decide how long he’s willing to wait for them—certainly not long enough for them to send another message, but Mythra will be able to tell if they start moving on the Albiore again just fine. Can he wait for that?

In any case.

Along with the message about the Albiore, there’s a second message. Luke’s handwriting, though it’s addressed to Mythra from “her friend”, and Jade thanks whoever had the foresight to not put his name down on the paper. Sometimes that party has sense.

Anyway of course such a cryptic address and signature means it’s highly suspicious and for the sake of state security Jade is obligated to read it before it reaches the hands of its recipient. So he does.

It’s in code of some kind, which certainly isn’t a surprise. Interesting choice of weather metaphors, though. He’d sit and puzzle it out, but it’ll be faster to let Mythra have it and let her reaction tell him what it means, especially since she’s sitting right here. He can’t realistically spend more than another few seconds pretending to read two relatively short messages, after all.

“What’s the news?” Mythra asks, and, exactly, his time is up.

“They had to stop for repairs.”

“What!?”

“They say it’s minor, could be fixed by today,” Jade continues. “Though I say if you haven’t noticed them resuming travel within the next few hours, we should consider going to meet them.”

“Can’t we just go now?” Mythra asks, which, you know what? Jade should have expected.

She has a point, too, but: “You may want to read this first.”

Mythra snatches the proffered message from his hands, scowling first at the handwriting, and then relaxing noticeably as she starts reading. By the time she’s reached the end of the sentence, she’s smiling and slapping one hand to her face to hide it as she turns her head away. She’s even blushing.

“Architect, he’s such a sap,” she grumbles, but the edge is undercut by how wide she’s smiling.

Jade raises his eyebrows. _That’s_ what she got out of the message?

“What’s it say?” Jade asks, as if he hadn’t read it.

“Oh, just like, he’s fine, he misses me,” Mythra answers.

Jade’s eyebrows go a little higher. He supposes it makes sense, though. Weather forecast to articulate one’s mood certainly isn’t a _new_ concept. He wonders if the snow metaphors were just part of the weather code, or thematic for another reason. Though if Mythra’s Jade grew up anywhere like Keterburg, snow metaphors _would_ be apt. The sunshine, though…

He considers Mythra’s fading blush. The light she threw around yesterday evening, working out her worried energy. Comparing her to the sun _would_ make sense, especially in a weather-limited code.

But. If Mythra is sunshine, it makes Jade wonder—and perhaps he shouldn’t, but nonetheless he does—if the snow metaphors have to do with more than something like a childhood hometown. Mythra did say her world had eight elements, after all, instead of the six Jade is used to. Snow isn’t one of them, but ice is.

Perhaps that is reading too much into it.

( _Perhaps. In his experience, though, he is usually never wrong._ )

“What do you think?” he asks of Mythra, putting his wonderings aside for now. “Do we need to meet them sooner rather than later?”

Mythra looks up, startled. “Oh,” she says. She blinks. Frowns down at the note, studying an answer out of it. Jade rolls the words around in his mind as well, just to see if they reach the same conclusion, if he understands the code presented to him. Assuming a blizzard is some kind of emergency, then specifically saying it isn’t one might imply they can take whatever time they need. Except, is light snow good? Would a clear sky be better? And is the rest of the message simply there to say he misses Mythra, or…?

“I think,” Mythra says, scowling. She shakes her head. Shoves the piece of paper in her pocket. “Well, _I’d_ feel better the sooner I have my eyes on him,” she says, with that air of confidence she’s been projecting the whole time Jade’s known her (excepting those thirty minutes around when he had to drag her to the training grounds.) “I mean, I’m sure your friends are being nice to him, but that doesn’t mean he’s _enjoying_ it.”

Jade only wishes he knew why the other Jade wouldn’t be, besides the obvious. He has a few theories, but… better to leave those alone until he has some more concrete pieces for those puzzles.

“Then we can leave now,” he says.

“Really?” Mythra seems surprised.

Jade shrugs. “I don’t see the point in delaying the inevitable.” Better to camp and wait for them outside Theor Forest than in Malkuth, anyway. Less people in the forest to witness two Jade Curtisses. Less casualties. ( _Less loose tongues._ )

“Don’t try and tell me you expect us to walk there, though,” Mythra says. “I am _not_ doing a couple thousand miles on foot unless I have to.”

“Oh of course not, I have a better idea in mind.”


	5. So since I see you and understand you because I am just like you in these feelings

Noelle determines soon enough that the Albiore’s repairs will take the better part of the day, which means Natalia and Tear and Anise set off early in the morning to send a message to Malkuth with the update, as well as spend the day shopping in the next town over, if Jade heard them right. Guy stays behind to help Noelle with repairs. Jade stays behind because showing his face in town would be a terrible idea. Ion elects to stay put as well, with some excuse about how he’s not sure he wants to make that walk, considering his health, which the whole party agrees with, though Jade definitely gets the sense most of them are surprised that he didn’t want to go along. Anise seemed to worry about him, but was quickly assured by Luke as well as Jade that if they were staying behind—when Luke decided to stay behind, Jade isn’t exactly sure—then Ion would be safe from any threats.

So, with the girls off on their trip and Guy helping Noelle with the Albiore’s repairs, that just leaves Jade, Luke, and Ion, sitting in the grass in the shade of the Albiore.

Jade’s had worse company.

(Also, from the feel of things, Mythra’s heading his direction. It will take her a while, but at least she _didn’t_ get herself thrown in jail.)

(If she had been, she would have been tugging the resonance like hell for his attention, and subsequently Jade would have continued to her on foot, distance and people recognizing him be damned.)

“Hey, Jade,” Luke says, sending a cautious glance over. Jade raises his eyebrows in invitation for Luke to continue talking. “I’m… sorry about yesterday,” Luke continues, which isn’t what Jade was expecting at all. Luke plays with the hair behind his head, as if he’s fascinated by the sensation of it, though his expression implies he isn’t really thinking about his hair at all. “I guess that’s probably silly, to still be thinking about it, but—”

“Thinking about what, exactly?” Jade interjects, because otherwise he has the feeling Luke could get going for a while, and he doesn’t want to risk that.

“Oh!” Luke breaks off, blushing. “I mean- For telling everyone to leave you alone, yesterday. It wasn’t really my place to speak for you…”

Is that all? Jade laughs, just a little, at the thought. “It’s fine, Luke, don’t worry about it,” he tells him. He almost leaves it at that, but if Mythra were here she’d be giving him the worst look for not being honest about the rest of it, so: “I appreciated it, actually.”

(It’s been thirty years. He’s gotten better about being honest about the little things.)

“R- really?” Luke stammers, like he’s surprised to hear the thanks. “I’m—well, I’m glad you’re not mad.”

Jade doesn’t ask why Luke thinks he would be mad. He knows better than to invite that discussion; surely it has to do with the other Jade. Instead he decides to ask something he’s curious about. (Luke looks guilty enough he might feel obligated to answer, which _is_ rude of Jade to abuse, but he does it anyway.) “I’m curious, though, Luke,” he says, “why you find yourself so familiar with the topic of being compared to someone else? Does it have something to do with being a replica?”

He thinks that’s the word they all used, yesterday.

“Oh, that’s right, you wouldn’t know,” Luke laughs. “Do—I mean I guess you don’t even know what a replica is…”

“I can piece it together.”

“Okay, then, yeah. It’s got something to do with that,” Luke answers. “Though it’s also got a lot to do with…” He scowls, distantly. “Well, to make a long story short, I was created to replace the ‘real’ Luke, and no one knew I was a replica, so I spent the past seven years having people compare me to the Luke I was before I ‘lost’ my memories… Except I never really lost any memories. I was just a completely different person.” He huffs a sigh, and finally drops a hand from the back of his head. “But it still… was terrible, always getting blamed for not remembering anything, when it wasn’t even my fault!”

That strikes a chord of familiarity within Jade. Not that he was ever _blamed,_ exactly, for the lack of memories. But everyone would direct their sadness at Jade instead of their anger at the man truly responsible and it was _infuriating,_ knowing the answer but spending so long unable to do anything about—

“My condolences,” Jade makes himself say, instead of letting his mind wander the rest of the way down that path. Those days where he was helpless and stuck are long behind him. “Seven years is much longer than I ever had to deal with that.”

Luke shrugs, aggressively, apparently not liking Jade’s sympathy. “It got better when we met Asch, at least. Uh, Asch is the re—the guy I’m a copy off.” He picks at the grass below him, agitated. “When we found out I was a replica everyone stopped being weird about my memory. So that was good.”

“…it’s different for blades than it is for replicas, isn’t it?” Ion asks, and Jade turns to the boy, somewhat surprised. He’d been so busy watching Luke he hadn’t even realized how intently Ion had been staring at him. In… some manner of being intent, anyway. Ion’s face still doesn’t betray much emotion, caught even now in that too-neutral smile of his.

“It is,” Jade answers, as he wonders what Ion is hiding. “After all, I didn’t replace anyone. It is just the lot of blades to live a lifetime, and then forget it when they die and are reborn into a new lifetime. Which is all well and good, provided you actually live a full lifetime. But should you die prematurely…”

He cuts off, tempering the ice in his veins before it gets any colder. ( _It was less the being expected to remember he hated, and more its reminder that all his previous memories had been_ robbed _from him, several times over._ )

“I suppose that would leave a lot of broken friendships, wouldn’t it,” Ion says, and that too-neutral smile vanishes to create a frown that is simply a lack of said smile.

“Awkward ones, at the least,” Jade answers, thinking idly of Myyah. He wonders if they would have been closer, had he not forgotten the first handful of years they spent working together. He adjusts his glasses as he considers Ion, though: “…you sound like you’re familiar,” he hedges in question.

Ion blinks. That too-neutral smile fixes itself on his face again. “I… am, actually.”

Luke leans towards Ion, concerned. “Ion?” he asks.

“It’s alright, I want to tell him,” Ion assures his worried friend, and then he turns his attention to Jade. “I’m a replica, too,” he explains. “The previous Fon Master, the previous Ion, he… he was ill. So he and Mohs turned to fomicry before he died. I am still the Fon Master, but I’m not… I’m not the same Ion.”

Luke leans back, a little, hands resting on his knees. “And… no one but us knows,” he adds, perhaps for Jade’s benefit.

“Well, a few other people do,” Ion corrects. “But the point is, Jade…” And here, Ion turns his body back towards Jade. “The Ion before me was friends with a girl named Arietta. She was the Fon Master Guardian, like Anise is now. But…”

He trails off. Jade picks up the train of thought without much difficulty.

“But if they wanted to keep it a secret that you were a replica, they couldn’t have her around you, could they,” Jade finishes. “She’d know if you didn’t have memories.”

“Yes,” Ion says, and here Jade pinpoints the stiffness about Ion that had been bothering him up until now. There has been not the slightest nod nor shake of the head from the boy; he barely ever moves, and he definitely doesn’t emote outside of that too-neutral smile. ( _Is that a replica thing? But then, Luke has no problems…_ )

“So now Arietta thinks I hate her,” Ion continues, and, oh, he does know how to sigh. “And she blames Anise for it, but it’s not either of their faults…”

“Sounds difficult,” Jade comments. The opposite problem Jade had to face, in truth, but similarly stressful, he thinks. ( _Just with less threat of murder._ ) ( _…probably. Who knows what Mohs is like. Jade has only heard very little._ ) After all, Ion is rather young—likely younger than he appears—and to be such a major political figure, with so many eyes on him, all while holding up the charade that he isn’t an entirely different person than he was before? Jade doesn’t envy him.

“It is difficult,” Ion agrees. “I hope… maybe when all of this is over… Maybe we won’t need a Fon Master, anymore. Not that I want to tell everyone I’m a replica. But I think Arietta deserves to know…”

He trails off, sitting with his thoughts, his hands resting—unmoving—in his lap. Jade is loath to interrupt him, and even Luke has decided that he should be quiet while Ion thinks.

Finally:

“Thank you,” Ion says, fixing the both of them with a smile much wider than he normally does. “The both of you… Talking about it has made me understand some of my thoughts a little better, I think…”

It’s not really a thing that needs a _you’re welcome_ in response. Better to continue let Ion sit and think over his thoughts, in Jade’s opinion.

\- - -

Well it’s certainly no Tartarus, but Jade’s still able to procure a warship of slightly smaller size to make the trip—at least as far as Theor Forest, anyway. Mythra’s exact words on seeing the vehicle in question were “that thing really moves? _damn_!” which Jade supposes he shouldn’t be surprised about, given the gist he’s gotten about technology and transport on her world. She spends the better part of the first hour in transit just exploring all the rooms ( _again, it’s no Tartarus, but it’s still somewhat sizeable_ ) before her curiosity is sated enough that she finally settles down.

“So, Jade, question,” Mythra says, as she plops down in a chair adjacent to him. A glance at the only soldier in the room is enough to convey the order to leave; he doesn’t need anyone else witnessing how easily she reads him. It’s uncomfortable enough without an audience.

“I suppose we have nothing better to do,” Jade allows, because it’ll be hours yet before they reach their destination. “What is it?”

“What’s fomicry?”

“It’s really none of your concern—”

“It keeps coming up, and it sounds important,” Mythra counters.

She has something of a point, and it wouldn’t be much effort at all to say that it’s a process that creates replicas, but then he’ll have to sit here and lecture on why that’s a _bad_ thing, actually. Lecturing is frankly the last thing he wants to do. And chances are she’ll find to squeeze more of the story out of him than she strictly needs, and how is that fair?

Better get her off the topic.

“Who’s Citan?” Jade asks.

It works exactly as he wanted. Mythra recoils as if struck, her expression immediately turning sour.

“A dead asshole,” Mythra responds, hugging one arm over her chest though her cadence is smug. “What’s fomicry?”

“A kind of science,” Jade allows, answering the question equivalently. She glares at him. He smiles the kind of smile that lets her know he’s willing to do this back and forth all day. And, because it wouldn’t do to let her have any edge on him: “What exactly did he do to your Jade?”

Mythra lets out a bark of laughter. “No, not answering that one,” she says.

He didn’t really expect her to.

“How about a different one, then?” Jade says. “Blades don’t age, do they?”

Mythra considers him, wary. She’s still scowling. “No,” she answers.

“And they lose their memories when they die, yes?” Jade continues, which isn’t fair at all, but it’s important to keep her off-kilter if he’s going to get the answer he wants out of this conversation. Does this involve telling her anything about fomicry? Well, if he has to.

“What the—” Mythra responds, reflexively, still looking somewhat wary. “Yeah, I already told you that, remember? Why would we be going through so much trouble to create and distribute memory patches if blades _didn’t_ forget—”

It’s the why they even _want_ to go to so much trouble that’s been on Jade’s mind. Certainly it helps ease the burden of a flawed system that has at least hurt Mythra if not her Jade as well ( _he’s still got a pin in that thought, not quite enough evidence to back it_ ), but it seems like such a specific part of the problem to fix. And certainly it’s not his problem, but criticizing the lack of thought put into this plan ( _he hates to think of himself as so single-minded; hates that he knows exactly the kind of things that could lead him to put such blinders on_ ) might give him a better idea to find the source of the obsession.

And so: “But has anyone considered that giving an immortal being the ability to remember not only every death they take but also hundreds of years of regrets might just be a bad thing?” Jade asks. “Perhaps it’s good that blades forget—”

Mythra punches him.

How she crossed the room in the span of a blink, Jade has no idea, but.

“Don’t you _dare_ ,” Mythra hisses. “You have _no idea_ what you’re talking about.”

Jade idly reaches up to make sure his jaw is still in place. It is.

“I was just saying—”

“ _No._ ” Mythra’s tone is like ice. Her expression is void of its usual light. “You will _never_ understand what it’s like—living every day in constant fear that your memories will be _robbed_ from you, and you’ll go walking around three days later like nothing changed, with no idea why—” There, she breaks off, but it’s telling enough.

She tears her gaze away from him, shame coloring her cheeks. She shakes out the hand she punched him with.

And then she leaves the room.

Jade lets her go. There’s no reason to make her stay. He takes a moment to continue assessing the damage as his mind turns, uncomfortable thoughts he doesn’t quite want to complete, just yet. His glasses are fine, at least, which is a blessing considering they are a rather finicky piece of fontech. His lip is split, though, and his jaw still _aches._ If he hadn’t believed her when she said blades were generally stronger than humans, he certainly believes her now. He’ll have to scrounge up a gel to heal this, but he’ll give Mythra another minute or so before he leaves the room, so that they don’t bump into each other when that’s doubtlessly the last thing she wants at the moment. For now, he’ll consider the answer she gave him.

It wasn’t the answer he was expecting. It’s an answer far more sinister, and he’s starting to realize why she claimed so easily she’d dealt with drivers worse than him. He may be a monster, but he has enough of a facsimile moral compass to confidently say he wouldn’t stoop to wiping someone’s memories unless needs absolutely demanded it. He certainly wouldn’t use the threat—the act?—as leverage to make someone obey him. And it _must_ be one of Mythra’s previous drivers who was guilty of the crime ( _likely the one named Citan_ ), because one who lives in a society where killing blades is common practice does not so readily infodump about the inner workings of the blade system to a stranger, regardless of how much trust one holds in another man who shares the stranger’s name and face.

The questions then remain: was Mythra only threatened, or did her driver actually go through with it? Once? Multiple times?

Was it just Mythra, or her Jade, as well?

( _And that final question is really rather more dependent on whether or not her Jade is capable of having had a driver. Mythra said all blades needed one. But just because she didn’t mention ways to opt out doesn’t mean they don’t exist. And, certainly, if her Jade was the victim of having his memories robbed, then no wonder…_ )

The pain in Jade’s jaw is nearing distracting. He puts his thoughts aside long enough to set about finding a gel to heal himself before the damage is wholly irreversible.

\- - -

Mythra avoids him for the rest of the day. Jade supposes that’s understandable.


	6. the evergreen trees are covered with snow

Noelle has the Albiore fixed by sunset. If Mythra weren’t moving at a speed that suggests she could be here sometime tomorrow, Jade would suggest meeting up with them, but he doesn’t want to make Noelle pilot for some two, three hours straight to cross the distance remaining, not after she’s been working all day. So Jade decides to leave it be. They can see how things look in the morning.

For lack of better options, considering they don’t want to take Jade into town—this close to Grand Chokmah, he’s _going_ to get recognized, especially traveling with their party—they set up camp outside the Albiore, instead. Anise frets about Ion, who seems equally unbothered and thrilled by the concept. Jade defends him, of course. He’s only known the boy two days, but it’s long enough to know that he doesn’t get out enough.

By the time dinner rolls around, Anise has forgotten all about it, too busy regaling them all with tales from the market trip. Natalia and Tear interject delightedly, and then once they are done Luke follows up by teasing Guy over some repair mishap that happened earlier. Ion watches the whole time, his smile more genuine than that neutral default. These may not be _his_ friends, but Jade feels all the lighter having witnessed it, nonetheless.

He hopes Mythra’s day is alright, wherever she is. The emotion bleed is tight, somewhat uncomfortable for a while, but it evens out in the end, edging towards boredom. Unsurprising.

The only other thing of note that happens is Jade embarking on a losing battle against his hair in an attempt to get it braided before he sleeps. He’s had enough practice, over the years, but Mythra’s still better at it.

No nightmares, that night.

\- - -

When he wakes up in the morning—long before anyone else it seems—Jade notes that Mythra has made significant progress in closing the distance between them overnight. She must not have stopped. Whoever she’s traveling with, by whatever means, must be either very kind or very determined, to not have kept traveling through the whole night.

That, or Mythra stole some kind of vehicle. Jade can’t exactly rule that one out. Only time will tell.

He attempts to re-braid his hair, while he waits for everyone else to wake. It goes marginally better than last night.

“…do you want help?” Tear’s voice, cautious.

Jade blinks, looks up at her. She already looks embarrassed to have asked.

“No, thank you,” he tells her, even and kind. He doesn’t want it done badly enough to trust his hair in the hands of a stranger.

Tear blushes, deep. “Right,” she says, her voice pitched up an octave in her embarrassment.

She finds something to busy herself with. Jade does the polite thing and pretends that didn’t just happen.

By the time everyone else is awake, Jade’s quite certain that Mythra is currently in the middle of that forest to the north of them, which means finding them while on the Albiore will be nigh impossible. Better to stay put and let her come to them.

She’ll be here before the day is out. That’s enough for Jade.

\- - -

By noon, she’s bored. Being bored, Mythra turns to the one thing she normally does when she’s bored—and frankly, hasn’t gotten to do often enough, recently.

She hassles any soldier who doesn’t look busy into sparring with her.

Some are quite willing. Some get heckled into it by their friends. They all lose quite miserably. Which… only increases the heckling and the hotshots who think they can take her. Hey, that’s exactly what Mythra wanted, though. She’s having the time of her life.

She kicks the latest to the ground, relenting as he calls quits. Before she can quite ask the steadily-growing crowd who’s next…

Jade slides through the parted crowd, and summons his spear. Mythra… didn’t know humans could do that, on this world.

“Shall we?” Jade asks.

Mythra scoffs, tosses her hair over her shoulder. “Like I’d say no.”

The hour or so she’s been doing this is _just_ long enough to have gotten her used to the whole reciting-incantations-to-cast-artes thing, so when Jade starts it up she’s barely even surprised. She’s kind of grateful for it, actually. Foresight’s broken in this world ( _as in, it literally doesn’t work? For some reason?_ ) so the incantation thing gives her plenty of time to prepare and evade, so long as she’s paying attention to where the ether’s concentrating.

What she _isn’t_ prepared for is the fact that when Jade’s arte releases, it’s _fire._ Like, _a lot of fire,_ erupting at her feet.

“Whoa!” Mythra shouts, startled, as she rolls out of the way. “The- the hell?!” Architect, she wishes Foresight had pinged her for that. Getting accidentally hit by fire would hit way worse than the ice she’s used to. Why _is_ Foresight broken, anyway? And more importantly—

“What?” Jade asks, and then grins. “Sorry, do you want me to go easy on you?”

“Oh _hell_ no,” Mythra shouts back. She kicks off the ground and lunges at him, sword singing through the air. Look—whatever, right? Blades don’t exist in this world. And apparently people aren’t restricted to one element, either. Who cares! She’s got a spar to win, and she is _not_ going to let Jade beat her just because Foresight’s broken and he’s not fighting like she expects him to.

It’s a close fight. Not as close as Mythra would have liked. But Jade’s plenty fast even in between his dumbass casting, and without Foresight, well… Maybe if she hadn’t been worried about hurting him, or about damaging the warship, but as it stands:

Jade wins.

_Barely._

(At least the crowd seems just as disappointed that she lost.)

“You know, you weren’t so bad,” he says. She’s not sure it’s better or worse that he isn’t trying to help her up, having opted instead to stand with his hands in his pockets. (That part’s worse.)

“If Foresight wasn’t broken, I’d’ve wiped the floor with you,” Mythra spits on reflex, prone to boast even in her defeat. ( _If he’d fought like she’d expected, that would’ve made it way easier, too._ ) She gets to her feet on her own.

“If what wasn’t broken?” Jade asks.

Mythra catches herself mentally about then, having quite abruptly realized she does not want to explain what Foresight is. “Look, nothing,” she says, and Jade doesn’t look like he believes her, but he also doesn’t look like he wants to press it in front of a crowd. “You did good, too. That was fun.”

Jade doesn’t smile, but there _is_ a change in expression that Mythra knows to read meant he enjoyed it, too, even if he isn’t going to admit as much. It makes Mythra grin all the wider.

\- - -

In the twenty-four hours it’s been since Mythra asked him about fomicry, Jade’s decided that perhaps she deserves at least part of an explanation. After all, the topic of replicas is bound to come up at least _once,_ by means of someone in the party drawing a parallel between replicas and the two Jades, if not other means. To leave Mythra in the dark on the matter would be cruel, in a fashion, never mind _pointless._

( _Perhaps he feels like he owes it to her, as well._ )

So.

“I suppose I should answer at least part of your question,” Jade says, once he has Mythra alone. She squints at him like she certainly doesn’t appreciate his bullshit, and then raises her eyebrows in what he assumes is a gesture telling him to _get on with it and explain, then._ “About fomicry,” he elaborates, and Mythra’s confusion becomes interest. 

“Yeah?” she says.

Jade sits down in one of the chairs, opposite the one she’s lounging in. She makes a half-hearted attempt to be more upright than she was before, but she’s still got her legs swung over one of the arms, sitting sideways.

“To put it very simply, fomicry is the process of creating a copy of something. The copy is called a replica.”

Mythra blinks at him.

“That’s it?”

Jade sighs.

“I mean,” Mythra continues, and she does push herself on her elbows so she can better turn towards him, though her legs still dangle over the side of the chair, “The way you were amping this up really gave me the sense it was _way_ worse. But if it’s just copying something—” Some kind of realization seems to click to her. “You can copy people, too?”

She doesn’t really sound surprised. Just curious.

Jade fiddles with the side of his glasses. Once they’re adjusted, he drops his hands and keeps talking. “Yes, but performing fomicry on someone living puts them through pain equivalent to torture, so it’s highly illegal.”

“Ohhh,” Mythra says, understanding, but not quite like she appreciates the weight of it. Or maybe she’s heard worse.

(Then again, she did say she and her Jade left from a _top-secret government project with horrible working conditions,_ so perhaps he shouldn’t rule it out. It certainly would factor into why her previous driver was so eager to wipe her memories.)

“Wait,” Mythra says, scowling at him. “If it’s like torture, why would someone think you performed it on yourself? Who the hell tortures themself just to…”

“I would,” Jade answers, as she trails off. “Or I should say, I might have, were I ten years younger, and significantly more foolish. Never mind desperate to find answers to questions I rather shouldn’t have been asking.” He stops there, to take stock of Mythra’s reaction. She seems surprised. …strange. “Are you saying your Jade wouldn’t do something like that?”

“I…” Mythra shrugs, uncomfortable. “Look, things were different, for us, okay?”

“…because of his amnesia?” Jade wagers a guess.

Mythra’s expression turns cold again.

“I mean. Yeah.”

“Are you telling me he wouldn’t do anything to get those memories he lost back?” Jade continues, because though Mythra would not know why it’s a fair comparison, it is. Just as resurrecting Nebilim was a hopeless dream, the way Mythra’s explained it, a blade hoping to find memories they lost would be similarly hopeless. If… the other Jade is a blade, anyway. And if he isn’t, well.

He doesn’t get an answer this time, though. Mythra just levels that cold glare on him.

“Can you _not_?” she says. “It’s none of your business.”

Jade holds his hands up in surrender. “Fair enough,” he relents. He expected that outcome, after a fashion, but they always say you miss every shot you don’t take. “By the way, how much further away would you say we are?”

At this, Mythra relaxes. “Couple hundred miles.”

Just the way she says it makes it clear how excited she is to finally get to see her Jade. He almost hates to burst her bubble.

“Let me know when we’re within ten miles. We’ll have to walk the last stretch.”

“Wait, what!? Why!”

“Did I not just say why I was likely to get arrested for fomicry? That doesn’t exclude your Jade either, for the record. We’ve been over this.”

Mythra grumbles, but: “Yeah, fine, I’ll let you know.”


	7. You have no excuses.

With the way Mythra tugs on the resonance link and the fact her pace has slowed to what Jade assumes to be walking, Jade figures well enough that this is her way of telling him that she’d appreciate it if he could meet her halfway. He explains the situation to his current companions, and once they all determine that they are just close enough to render the Albiore useless, they all insist on coming with him. Jade doesn’t care enough to stop them.

The emotion bleed sings with tighter and tighter excitement the smaller the distance between them becomes. Jade cannot say whether it is his fault or Mythra’s. The chatter of his companions as they speculate on Mythra—as well as whether or not she’ll have their Jade with them, but mostly just about Mythra—is a somewhat welcome distraction. The fact that they’re so excited to meet her is touching, after a fashion. Jade does deliberately stir the pot of their wild theories. What would be the fun if he didn’t?

It turns out to be a good thing he brought companions ( _or rather, that they followed after him and he didn’t protest_ ), because literally within the final mile separating him from Mythra they accidentally walk through a monster nest.

He yanks on the resonance link for Mythra’s attention, and then he can’t think about much else but the fighting, seeing as fighting the first wave of monsters simply aggravates others nearby and then there’s a second wave, and—

Mythra is close enough to be sending him ether. The affinity link blares to life.

( _Jade isn’t paying any attention, but in that moment Tear and Natalia and Ion all startle, because for any man—especially Jade—to be suddenly outputting that many seventh fonons—_ )

Jade tests it by slamming a wall of light at the gathered monsters. It’s extremely satisfying. Oh, not the monsters dying, of course. But the sensation of Mythra’s ether humming in his veins. He missed her.

“Jade!!” Mythra shouts, and Jade’s core sings with her proximity.

He doesn’t turn towards her only because he is very busy trying to keep this tiger-like monster from eating his face.

“You took your sweet time!” he calls brightly over his shoulder.

“Yeah, well, maybe don’t land on the other side of the planet next time??”

Jade laughs, lets the flow of battle spin his attention towards her. Ah—“Behind you!”

The attacking monster dies on Mythra’s sword before it reaches her. “Thanks, Foresight’s broke,” Mythra says, which answers Jade’s next question before he can think it. “Which brings me to—” She pauses just long enough to crush another monster. “What d’you say to finishing the rest of these off in one go?”

“Fine by me.”

“Whiteout?”

“We have guests, Mythra, I don’t think they’d appreciate it.”

“Just Desserts, then.”

“Seems overkill.”

“Strongest attack first is just common sense!”

“That’s true,” Jade allows, and then immediately scans the area to make sure they have room. He jumps back to make sure they have a little more. “Everyone else, get back!” he calls, then turns to Mythra. “Ready?”

“Locked and loaded!” she replies, chipper.

“One, two… _now!_ ”

The enemies all freeze where they are. Mythra jumps. Jade hefts his spear above him, braced against both hands. The first wave of light slams down against the ground. Mythra lands on Jade’s spear—with a shove, he launches her back into the air, and then hops back out of the blast radius. The second wave of light crashes down, and what monsters don’t survive it Jade finishes with a rain of icicles.

“Hell yeah!” Mythra shouts, as she lands. She slaps her palm against Jade’s awaiting hand in a high-five.

The emotion bleed sings bright and loud, satisfaction humming alongside relief and joy. Mythra’s grinning so wide her face threatens to split, and Jade finds himself smiling wide in return. The world seems to have settled into place again.

But then there’s a _twang_ in the resonance, like a string being plucked. There’s a third source of ether flooding them, overwhelming. Jade staggers. Mythra shouts and falls to her knees.

“What the—” Mythra bites out, clutching her arms over her chest. She’s glowing golden, wind stirring her hair. The light hurts his eyes but Jade dare not look away. “Get— _out—_ ”

Power sings from within the resonance, but that power is foreign. Jade takes a step towards Mythra, hand outstretched, just as she throws her head back.

“ ** _This… cannot… continue…_** ” a voice speaks, with Mythra’s mouth. Just underneath, Jade can hear Mythra’s own voice, twinned under the foreign one, both voices pained. “ ** _If it does… then the world will… surely…_** ”

They break off. There’s one more terrible flare of power—

And then it rushes out of the resonance as quickly as it came, but the residue it left is still plenty to leave Jade dizzy as he tries to find his footing.

“Jade…!” Mythra says, and Jade snaps his head up in time to see her sway. He moves to catch her before she hits the ground, easing her into his lap instead. She’s unconscious. His heart thuds uncomfortably loud, and his core rings with panic. Mythra _fainting_ isn’t exactly inspiring of good news. At least a quick survey of her core crystal doesn’t show any obvious damage to it or the surrounding skin.

Jade lifts his head to scan his companions for information, because they’re more likely to understand strange phenomena than he is, considering it is their world.

“Can someone tell me what the hell is going on?” he demands.

“Actually I was rather hoping you could, Jade,” answers his own voice, and Jade turns to see… himself, arms crossed, looking down on him somewhere between calculating and disapproving. “You and Mythra _are_ the ones outputting all the seventh fonons, after all.”

“We’re what?”

“Hey,” Luke interjects, before Jade can get an answer. “I know that voice—”

“Luke, stay back,” the other Jade says, sharply, with only a glance in the boy’s direction. “Continue your thought, though.”

“That voice,” Luke says. “It’s- I hear it sometimes, in my dreams. Or- or when I get the headaches, but it’s not Asch.”

“Noted, thank you Luke,” the other Jade says, and Jade watches this funhouse mirror of his own face twist with displeasure, if not concern. Before he can share his thoughts, his eyes flicker towards the children, again. “Natalia, Tear, you both know better, honestly. Thank you, Ion, for being the only one with common sense right now. If your name is not Guy or Anise, I do not want you any closer.” And then to Jade, he elaborates: “The last thing we need is more seventh fonons in this mess,” which would be a fine explanation if Jade understood what exactly a seventh fonon was.

“And why would that be a problem?” Jade asks, because it would be good to know, especially since apparently he’s outputting so many.

The other Jade sighs and turns to his friends. “Did none of you explain what fonons are to him? Really?”

“We covered a lot, but,” Guy begins, but Jade isn’t having it.

“They told me what fonons are,” he interjects, because he doesn’t need to be spoken of like he’s not here. He runs his fingers idly through Mythra’s hair to distract himself from the anger it still stirs in him. “But that seventh fonons are apparently dangerous didn’t come up.”

“Guy got distracted by fontech,” Anise says.

“ _He_ asked me!!”

“Ignoring Guy,” Jade says, staring at his double. “Why are they dangerous?”

The other Jade sighs and adjusts his glasses. It’s… strange, actually, to see his own face so annoyed. “Seventh fonons,” the other Jade explains, “can be used for all manner of things, the most prominent two being healing and, conversely, _mass destruction._ The kind that destroys cities.”

 _Oh,_ Jade thinks, mentally adjusting himself. He has only seen records of the Aegis war—and thank Architect the cannons have not been fired in the past thirty years—but he shivers to think of such a power, anyway. To shift his mind away from it ( _and the guilt_ ), he pings Mythra’s core to request a diagnostic on how she’s doing…

“Stop doing that,” the other Jade snaps.

Jade doesn’t, though the diagnostic is only good information, which means it’s short. But, how did the other Jade even know… “Stop doing what?” Jade asks, playing innocent. “I wasn’t aware I was doing anything.”

“Stop channeling seventh fonons, we are standing quite literally in a minefield.”

Jade scowls. He wasn’t channeling any artes. Just requesting information across the resonance link. …oh.

“Seventh fonon is sound, yes?” he asks.

“I guess that means we’ve come to the same conclusion,” is how the other Jade answers. Jade is starting to understand why Mythra is always so mad at him when he avoids giving a straight answer. And, actually, if that’s the other Jade’s response, then:

“How much did Mythra tell you about blades?”

“Plenty, but most importantly, that the thing tying you and her together is called resonance. It’s probably not a coincidence that we have similar terminology for something related to seventh fonons. Resonating _does_ have to do with sound, after all.” The other Jade explains that, and then scowls, looking down his nose at Jade in a way that makes Jade’s skin crawl like it hasn’t for thirty years. “You’re still channeling seventh fonons.”

“Not intentionally,” Jade says, smile tight, tone icy. Sure, now he runs his attention over the resonance link to check for a man who’s thirty years dead, checks it and tries not to think too hard about how quiet it is while Mythra is unconscious. But he wasn’t doing that _before._ “What do you want me to do? Stop being a blade?”

The other Jade inhales as he thinks it over. “We should move from this spot,” is what he settles on. “Seventh fonons are fine in small amounts—even constant—but I fear what would happen should Luke sneeze right now.”

“Hey,” Luke protests. “I’m not doing anything!”

“You’re right, Luke,” the other Jade says, and continues in the same breath: “I’m terribly sorry. You _are_ doing quite well, unlike some other people I will not name.”

If Jade did not have Mythra, unconscious, in his lap, he might have done something drastic. He certainly thinks about it, for a second. He wonders if anyone notices the encroaching chill, or if the damage he set to the battlefield is distracting them from what he is currently outputting.

“Hurry up,” the other Jade says, and at that point Jade snaps his head up, to see everyone else walking but him. “Unless you need help carrying her.”

Jade takes all the bitterness in his soul and kills it out of habit, though if he were to let it reign no one would be the wiser. “I’m quite capable,” he says, and gets to his feet, taking Mythra with him with ease. The strength naturally granted to him by being a blade was not among the things he lost, when he became a flesh eater—in fact, very few flesh eaters are known to lose their blade strength, at least while they are still in the prime of their age.

As they walk back to the Albiore, Jade to the rear of the group, he scowls at the back of his own head, ill thoughts turning in his mind. Has he always been that snappy, that unbearable, that rude? Is that just how he acts, when he actually has unequivocal authority over something? The others called him Colonel, and Jade’s mind still reels at the thought of him with that much power, and he wonders darkly how much it has gone to his head or if he is just inherently like this.

He’ll have to ask Mythra, when she wakes.

Tear hesitates so she can walk alongside the other Jade, the _Colonel_ , then looks once over her shoulder. If Jade’s hands were not occupied, he’d wave at her, just to make it clear that yes he did see that.

“Should we separate them?” Tear asks, in what Jade desperately hopes she doesn’t think is a hushed tone. “The last thing we need is a hyperresonance…”

What that is, Jade would desperately like to know.

“Oh, I don’t think it’ll make a difference,” the Colonel answers, brightly. He sends a very pointed smile over his shoulder—all false and condescending—that Jade is certain he was meant to see. “They’re going to keep doing it regardless of the distance between them, so unless we want to separate them by some hundred miles—"

“Not a chance,” Jade interjects.

“That’s what I thought. Similarly I doubt getting him to let go of Mythra is a course of action worth pursuing.”

“Can you stop talking about me like I’m not here, please?” Thirty years later and it still makes his ether burn with discomfort. There’s nothing forcing him to grin and bear it anymore, though.

“My apologies,” the other Jade says.

He does not sound sorry at all.

They don’t make it all the way back to the Albiore before they stop—for the best, perhaps, seeing as it was nearly an hour that they walked away from it—but it’s a mile or so that they walk, ten or so minutes spent listening to nothing but the pounding of his own ether in his ears. Jade finds himself thinking murderous thoughts as he holds Mythra to him, and does his best to kill the thoughts rather than let them play out in his mind. The temperature still drops, though. There are worse things.

“Is this far enough?” Natalia calls back, her gaze fixed worriedly on Ion.

“I’m alright—” Ion protests, but Anise immediately follows with: “I don’t _feel_ any seventh fonons anymore—at least not like that!”

“This will do,” the other Jade says, and at his approval they all stop.

Jade lowers Mythra to the ground. He would sit with her, but seeing as everyone else is standing ( _regardless of whether or not Anise looks like she’s thinking about sitting on Ion to make him rest_ ), he doesn’t want to be the one they’re all looking down on. Mythra will complain, if she wakes soon enough to see this happening. She’ll understand, when he explains.

“What happened back there, seriously,” Luke asks, looking immediately to the other Jade for answers. “That voice…”

“I… I don’t know,” it’s Ion who answers, instead of the other Jade, sounding slightly out of breath, as well as worried. “But… Jade?” and he turns to the Colonel as well. Jade deliberately does not feel jealous. It only makes sense for them to turn to the man who actually has an answer to their questions. “Do you think…?”

The Colonel nods. “I believe we just witnessed Lorelei, yes,” he says.

“Wait, what?” Luke says.

“No one’s ever seen Lorelei…” Tear begins.

“He’s the aggregate consciousness for seventh fonons, though,” Ion tells her, though his eyes flicker Jade’s way; the explanation meant for him, as well? Jade isn’t sure he’s grateful Ion thought to worry about him ( _though perhaps he should be kinder, Ion is only two years old_ ). “I feel like if anyone was going to see Lorelei, well, now would be a good time…”

Just how many seventh fonons were he and Mythra outputting above the normal?

“Quite frankly, given the amount we just witnessed, I’m astonished all we did was get Lorelei’s attention,” the other Jade says, his tone still bright. He fixes Jade with a look that’s dismissive, because apparently he’s bound to spend the whole day pushing all of Jade’s buttons. “We’ll have to keep you and Mythra off of the battlefield.”

That’s fair, but Jade’s not going to admit that.

“Mythra’s going to hate that,” is what he says, instead.

The other Jade just smiles at him. “Well, that’s your job to convince her to listen, isn’t it?”

Jade sees red. ( _A blade’s duty is to fulfill its master’s wishes, is it not?_ ) In the past thirty years he has barely heard such sentiment, because so rarely does he interact with asshole humans who think themselves better than him. ( _A blade’s purpose is dictated by its driver, after all._ ) But each time it is the same—memories of a face he wishes he could forget, a voice he can never seem to; that smug, dismissive tone…

He takes a step towards his double, and for all the violence that must sit in his posture, the other Jade doesn’t at all seem threatened. To hear such sentiments spoken with his own voice, to see his own face smile in that infuriatingly high-and-mighty fashion—frankly it doesn’t make any sense, _unless_ —

“Tell me,” he says, and thinks not of how cold he is making the surrounding temperature. “Does the name Citan Uzuki ring any bells?”

The other Jade just smiles a smile Jade knows all too well, because it is the smile of a card won when his conversation partner had no idea they were playing cards at all. “No, it doesn’t,” he says, as he adjusts his glasses, all pleasant and unbothered by the fact that the only thing Jade would have to do to threaten him more obviously is put his spear to his throat. “But given the fact you and Mythra both seem so insistent to ask after him, am I right in guessing that he was your driver?”

Jade does not summon his spear.

But he does throw his fist into the other Jade’s face.

There’s a collective gasp from the crowd. Jade couldn’t give less of a shit. He stands there and he breathes, heavy, feeling satisfied but only just. His core won’t settle until he sees his opposite’s reaction. Perhaps it will come to blows. The only thing Jade would regret about that is that Mythra isn’t awake to see it.

Instead all the other Jade does is straighten and immediately check his glasses.

“You know it’s quite a good thing neither you nor Mythra has broken these, yet,” he remarks, unbothered. “They are quite a finicky bit of fontech, after all—”

“Shut up,” Jade spits. “Don’t say another word, or I might just do something worse than punch you.”

The other Jade only shrugs. “Quite honestly I’d welcome it. Very few people on this planet have the privilege to say they’ve fought themself.” His eyes are burning with challenge. “It might even be fun.”

Suddenly quite certain that if he missed the first blow he would simply follow it by freezing the Colonel’s blood solid so that his heart ruptured, Jade instead picks Mythra back up and walks. And as he walks, only one thought plays on repeat in his mind.

No wonder Citan liked him enough to keep him for twenty years.

They’re the same exact person.


	8. You are the stupidest person in the whole wide world.

Mythra wakes up.

She jolts upright, recognizing the feel of something like a cot beneath her, and before she can really take in the metal walls that look about the same as that warship thing she was on earlier, Jade is hugging her.

“Uh,” Mythra says, a little startled, because Jade is mostly miss re: physical affection and damn she must have worried him if he’s hugging her the moment she seems to be okay. His chin is kind of awkwardly tucked against her shoulder. He’s pinned her arms to her side, so all she can really do is pat him at the weirdest angle ever, but: “Hey, missed you too,” she says, brightly, because if she admits this is weird ( _it’s only a LITTLE weird_ ) he’ll back off immediately, embarrassed, and actually she’s appreciating the hug ( _though she would be appreciating it more if she could hug him back??_ )

Jade lets go of her, then, though he still holds onto her arms as he studies her. Mythra ends up studying him in return, though for probably vastly different reasons. His hair is in the shittiest braid ever ( _valid, he’s very bad at putting them in his own hair_ ) but he’s got bags under his eyes, too, and there’s something tight about his expression, something that speaks of a stone just barely giving way to show his relief, and she—she _knows_ Jade. Of course she knows Jade. The stone isn’t a mask as much as it is a neutral state where he’s too exhausted for masks but too on edge for what his face looks like _without_ any masks.

And then there’s the emotion bleed. Architect, the emotion bleed.

There’s relief, of course, but there’s also something sick in ways the emotion bleed has not felt sick since Citan was still alive—or, well, probably the first few years after, as well—and it makes Mythra pause and squint at Jade.

“Are you okay?” he’s asking her, and by this point Mythra has completely discarded all thoughts about the whole getting possessed (???) thing because those can be dealt with, like, later. She’s not sure this can.

“Yeah, I am,” she tells her driver, because he’s not going to stop worrying until she does. “I don’t know what the fuck that was, but—” She leans towards him. “Are _you_ okay, Jade?”

He lets go of her and leans back. At this point Mythra notes how fucked his ether levels are and quietly starts passing him some of her own, because maybe that’ll at least fix how tired he looks.

“I’m,” he begins, and she can sense bullshit, so she cuts him off with a stern: “ _Jade_.”

Jade takes a deep breath. He is not the kind of man who fidgets. But he does scowl very intently at the wall, his hands clenched into fists, pressed against his knees.

“I may have punched the other Jade,” he says.

Mythra laughs; she can’t help it.

“Right?” she says. “He’s super punchable.”

Jade raises his eyebrows at her, unamused.

“What’d he do?” Mythra asks, because like—her getting mad enough to punch someone? A regular enough occurrence. _Jade_ getting mad enough to punch someone? Well, her money’s on the other Jade having said something about Citan.

“He implied it was my job to keep you in line.”

Oh, that’s way worse.

“He _what,_ ” Mythra demands, all brightness leaving her tone. “The hell? That asshole—” She turns to see if he’s around, but she and Jade are alone. ( _She’s not too worried about the WHERE, she trusts Jade to not take her somewhere dangerous without also warning her that it is upon first opportunity_. _Like, she’s curious, but she can ask later._ ) “Let me—” she begins, and starts to move, but moves just sudden enough that her head spins. Hm, not great!

Jade doesn’t quite bodily shove her back, but he sends her a look that does the equivalent. Mythra resettles, leaning back against the wall to support her weight. She stops channeling ether to Jade, too. She… might need that more than he does right now, actually. _Architect,_ why does she hurt all over? It’s not painful enough to like, be worrying, but the constant sharpness of _something_ wrong under her skin isn’t great, actually, now that she’s cataloguing it. Maybe it’s just par for the course, after being possessed by ??? some kind of ??? she doesn’t know what they were, just that they were insanely powerful, and—

( _memories of the vision they showed her despite Foresight being broken pass through her mind again; she’ll really have to tell Jade about that, later_ )

“You are not okay,” Jade tells her, all judgmental, and Mythra rolls her eyes at him.

“Give me an hour and I should be,” she shoots back, which might not be entirely truthful but feels like a reasonable estimate. Her head’s pressed against the metal behind her—not entirely comfortable, but feels kind of nice to have her weight supported—and she turns towards Jade, because, fuck, _he’s_ not okay either.

She knows that look on his face way too well. Still too stony, still kind of distant, like a million thoughts are screaming behind his eyes and he cannot find the means to shut them up. She fucking hates that face on him. Hates that if someone were to walk into the room right now, she knows _exactly_ what masks would slide onto his face to cover that pained expression, masks that she hasn’t seen in thirty years and frankly never wants to see again—

“Alright,” she says, with a shrug, as she considers her best friend. “So he said that, and you punched him—understandably, I would have too—and… then what? Is that all?”

He makes a face like that’s definitely not all. Mythra wonders if her anger hitting the emotion bleed makes the cocktail of Sick that Jade’s been brewing feel any better, or just worse. She moves her leg over so her ankle’s resting against his shin.

“He implied you punched him, earlier?” Jade says, a question, as he looks to her. He’s not answering _her_ question, but she’ll allow him this. It might be relevant. If it’s not, she’ll do what she can to steer him back on track so he doesn’t wiggle out of this conversation completely.

“Yeah, I did,” Mythra says, and then notes that Jade’s expression asks for the why. “He said something about—” Actually, if Jade knows what the other Jade said about blade memories, there might be murder. This is one situation in which they probably should not do a murder. “He was just, shitty, and it pissed me off.”

“He said something Citan would have?” Jade guesses, and the way his tone shapes around it—more resigned, speaking more of dread—means that he’s asking because that’s what’s bothering him, not that he’s taking a stab at her reasoning. ( _Well, it’s probably a little of that, too._ )

“Yeah.”

Mythra watches Jade after she’s answered, watches the gears behind that too-brick expression of his, watches as the stone gives away to something that looks alarmingly like despair. She realizes now how thickly dread sits in the emotion bleed, dread and disgust and it’s… Architect, maybe even edging into something worse than it normally felt like when Citan was alive? This isn’t the hard determination mixed with stress. This is something even lower.

“Jade?” she asks, worried.

“How often do I do that?” is what he asks back.

She’s even more worried, now, but she’s not going to leave that question hanging in favor of pressing him on _why the fuck_ he’s suddenly so worried about it, why he feels like he’s going to crumble inward. “Like, basically never.”

( _Not anymore, anyway. There was a while, first few years after Citan died, where Jade spent a lot of time parroting nonsense, but it’s been thirty years since then._ )

Jade sits there, stewing on it.

Mythra breathes.

“Why?” she asks.

“Because I have spent every day over the last thirty years killing every part of me that was tainted by him, but I realize now I might as well have been killing myself, because we have never been anything more than the same man,” Jade says, in a frantic, empty rush.

He’s sliding way too close to defeat for Mythra’s comfort.

“Whoa, what?” she says. “Jade, did you _not_ just hear my answer—”

“I killed that man but he is not dead he wears my face—”

“ _Jade_.”

“—because we were always one and the same. I meet another version of me and it is like looking at the monster who spent an ungodly amount of time driving me. We speak the same we joke the same and _he’s never even met Citan,_ which means this is just something inherent in me that’s—”

Fucking hell, he’s not going to shut up, is he?

Mythra gets to her feet. It hurts, sure, but not too badly. And forget about the fact that she’s way light-headed. The important thing is that Jade stops immediately, gaze snapping up to her.

“You should sit back down, you’re hurt,” Jade says, and to anyone else it might sound like a command, but Mythra knows that even though his tone hit several inches left of what normally sounds like concern, that’s only because he’s too worn out to do emotions like anyone else would. That’s fine, the concern speaks loud enough in the emotion bleed.

“You’re a thousand times better than Citan,” Mythra tells Jade, offended that he’d even think otherwise. “So what? You share the same shitty sense of humor! Last I checked, so do we.”

“Mythra.”

She puts a hand on her hip. Ignores, still, how dizzy she is.

“Listen to you!” she says, gesturing with her free hand. “You’re _worried_ about me.”

“That’s…” Jade squints at her, bewildered, too caught up in his own bullshit to make a really easy leap.

Apparently it’s on Mythra to spell it out for him. “Citan would never,” she says, plainly. “He’d tell me to hurry up and get over a splitting headache so I could get back to work. And, sure, maybe the other Jade would, too—but this isn’t about _him._ It’s about _you,_ and you’re—like I said! So much better than either of them!”

She wants to say she’s proud of him, but that’s like—weird?? It sits loudly enough in the emotion bleed, anyway, right next to her fondness. That can tell him all the same.

Jade looks up at her, looking somewhat more settled. The stone breaks for a tired smile, self-satisfaction singing in the emotion bleed.

“I suppose it’s not a hard bar to pass,” he says, “but you’re right.”

“Oh good, say that again.”

“Mythra.”

“I really don’t hear it enough. Come on, Jade, _you’re right, Mythra, you’re always right—_ ”

“You are not and you know it.”

Mythra laughs, grinning at him. She sits back down because, okay, sitting’s way better than trying to stand right now, and there’s no real _reason_ for her to stand, anyway.

“Missed you,” she says.

“It’s not _really_ a splitting headache, is it?” Jade asks, which might as well be a _missed you too._

Mythra shakes her head, shrugs for lack of understanding to articulate what it actually is. “Nah, I’m just kind of ache-y. Us blades aren’t really built for having someone else channeling ether through us unless we consent to it, you know?”

Of course he knows.

“And certainly not that much,” he agrees.

“Yeah.”

He’s silent for a moment, then sighs, fixing his glasses. It’s kind of a relief to see him do it, instead of sitting like a statue. “Well, I’d ask you what happened, but I doubt you’ll want to explain it twice,” he says. “So I’ll save my questions until we’ve rejoined everyone else. As much as I hate to give the other Jade _any_ floor, he knows more about this world than I do.”

“I think I got possessed by God,” Mythra says, just so it’s on the table, and because she wants her Jade to be the first to hear it. And also like, fuck what the other Jade has to say, right now.

“That sounds in line with what they were saying,” Jade tells her, which is as comforting as it isn’t. “Did God say anything more to you than what he said to us?”

“They… showed me a vision.”

“Did they now?”

“It uh, wasn’t pretty,” Mythra says, scowling, kicking her heels idly against the floor. “Like—our world mashing into this one? Dunno what they wanted us to do to _stop_ that, though.”

“Stop emitting seventh fonons, probably.”

“What?”

“Fonons are what this world has instead of ether—”

“I knew that.”

“Apparently everything a blade does regarding resonance emits them, and apparently in large quantities they’re bad.” Jade adjusts his glasses again, fiddling with the side of them. The smile on his face is welcome, and Mythra kicks how annoyed it makes her feel out of the emotion bleed, because if he’s acting like this then he’s feeling better. “Say, mass destruction, or I don’t know, our planets colliding. That kind of bad.”

“Oof.”

“We’ll have to talk to everyone else.”

He’s right, but Mythra doesn’t want to, so.

“Yeah, later,” she tells him, pulling her legs up onto the cot and sitting cross-legged. “Get over here, let me fix your hair.”

He does, without protest. In fact, he even says: “Thank you.”

“You’re not this shit at braids when it’s my hair,” Mythra teases.

“Have you tried braiding your own hair decently, Mythra? You always ask me for help, too.”

“Point.”

She knows as well as he does that they are never going to get better at doing their own hair for this precise reason. It makes her fond.

“I can’t believe you, also,” she says, just to talk, and also because she just processed. “I went through all sorts of trouble to try and hide the fact you were a blade, and here you are, core crystal out—”

“I had to convince them I wasn’t from this world somehow, this was the fastest.”

“All my hard work! I was lying my ass off for you…”

“Do you really think the other Jade believed you?”

“…no, but. I was trying.”

“I appreciate that. It’s just, this really is more of a core crystal out kind of look—”

She shoves him by the shoulders, and he laughs even as force sends him bent over for a second. Did that mess up how she was fixing his hair? Yes. Was it worth it? Also yes. It’s what he gets, turning her words against her like that. …the way he grins over his shoulder at her before he settles back into place was also worth it, also.

“Anything interesting happen while we were separated? Things were rather dull on my end,” Jade says, which she doubts, but she’ll indulge him for a second.

“Yeah, found out this Jade is best friends with _the emperor_.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“I am not.”

“No wonder he’s so stuck up.”

Mythra laughs, even though her impression of Peony was vastly different than that. “Actually,” she says, and proceeds to tell him all about it, just to watch him get a kick out of it, and the _rappigs._ Plus, once she catches him up on all the bullshit she’s been through over the past few days, and he can catch her up on his side of things, in return.

They talk for hours, and Mythra’s hair is braided by the end of it, too.

She feels much better, afterwards. And from the feel of things, and the shape of his smile, so does Jade.


	9. hope you didn’t miss me too much ;)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> photo ref for [jade's braid](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/631312499320291338/754521926751354880/unknown.png), and [mythra's braid](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/631312499320291338/754522290275876954/waterfall-braid.png)

“You didn’t have to antagonize him, Colonel,” Tear says, watching the other Jade go.

Their Jade shrugs. “All I did was ask him a question,” he says, in defense of himself.

The party exchanges looks. They know better than that.

“Was some question, whatever the hell it was,” Luke complains.

“Hey, not every day you get to see Jade punch himself, though,” Guy laughs.

“You all would have a better idea than I would as to what got him so worked up,” Jade says. “After all, you’ve been traveling with him for the past few days. I just got here.”

Again, the party exchanges looks, and then collective signals of uncertainty. Despite what he claims, Jade certainly has a better idea of why his words resulted in violence than any of them do.

“I mean,” Anise says, “is it really a surprise you pissed him off, Colonel? That’s what you always do.”

“Mm, that’s true,” Jade agrees, with no shame.

And then, without missing a beat: “Did you miss me, kids?”

Predictably, they all make noncommittal noises.

“I’d say it was like you were never gone, but you and the other Jade are very different people,” Guy says, scratching at his cheek.

“Are we, now?”

“Yeah, but maybe don’t bring it up too much,” Anise warns. “He gets kind of… touchy, about it.”

“Hey, I can’t blame him for being compared to some guy he doesn’t even know just because they share a face!” Luke interjects, hotly. “It _sucks_. He’s right to get mad about it.”

( _Ah, Jade thinks, with a flash of something that might be sympathy._

 _It wasn’t just Mythra being murdered over her memories, then._ )

“Regardless,” Tear interjects, with far too much practice in making that work for someone her age, Jade has always thought. “Should we go looking for him, do you think? I’m not sure he’d appreciate it, but—”

“Oh, no need,” Jade says, brightly. “No version of me can possibly be stupid enough to wander around an unknown world, fit of passion or no. He’s likely headed back to the Albiore. I was just waiting before I suggested moving; wanted to give him some time to _cool off._ ”

No one laughs at his pun. Shame, it was a good one.

( _He wonders, idly, if this would be enough of a bad mood to warrant a blizzard warning, in that code the other Jade has with Mythra._ )

“Did I say I missed you?” Luke asks, deadpan. “I take it back.”

“Wonder how long it’s gonna be before we get sick of him and want him gone again,” Guy muses. “I give it… two hours?”

“Guy, don’t be so mean,” Natalia scolds, and then immediately follows up with: “I’m sure it’ll take him at least six.”

“Ooh, even that’d be a new record,” Jade says, because the least he can do is play along with the joke. “Maybe I should shoot for five.”

Luke groans. “Alright, I’m walking!” he declares, and promptly does so.

Guy and Natalia chuckle before following him. Anise and Tear follow only a second later, Anise stage whispering to Tear: “Hey, were the other Jade and that girl _matching_!?”

“I…” Tear answers, and after that seems at a loss for words.

They… were matching, weren’t they, Jade realizes. Honestly he’s not even surprised, at this point.

Anyway, Jade only hasn’t moved after the kids because Ion is still staring at him.

“Is there something you need, Fon Master?” he asks.

“Maybe… don’t treat him the way you treat us?” Ion says.

“I’m sorry?”

He’s not used to being left entirely without footing, but Ion has seemed to have robbed him of it.

“It’s just… he isn’t as young as the rest of us are,” Ion continues, scowling in the way Ion always scowls, which is to say he simply doesn’t smile. “In fact, I think he’s older than you are? So I don’t…” Ion hesitates here, like he’s trying to pick words that won’t give away whatever exactly the real problem is. Finally, he settles on: “Well, Jade, be honest. If someone started speaking to you as if you’re a child just because you didn’t understand something, you’d hate it, right?”

Jade sighs. “I suppose so,” he agrees, and ignores the half-hearted guilt his conscience tries to dump on him.

“Then maybe you should treat him the way you’d want to be treated,” Ion says.

“You say that like it’s easy.”

Ion sighs. “Just try and be nice to him, okay? I don’t want to see you two fight.” And then Ion follows after the rest of the party, calling for Anise to wait up.

It… would be very difficult traveling conditions if the other Jade hated him, Jade is forced to admit. Perhaps an apology is in order. Or at the least, he’ll have to try and be more civil, from here on out, as he gathers answers to the final questions he has.

He doesn’t dwell on the fact that they all seem to like the other Jade more than him. It’d simply be absurd to be jealous.

\- - -

To say the least, it is something else to see his own face with his hair piled on top of his head such as the other Jade's is now. What exact kind of braid and bun combo it is and if it even has a name is not something Jade knows, though he suspects Luke might, seeing as Luke is the only one among them who has the inclination or need to learn—being nobility—as well as hair long enough for it. ( _Luke does; it's called a reverse braided bun._ ) Anise about loses her mind when she sees it, though that's hardly a surprise. In fact, most of the party’s shock and intense interest they watch Mythra and her driver with is only to be expected.

After all, when Mythra and the other Jade sit down amongst the party, they seem practically glued to each other. Oh, they aren’t _actually_ sitting in each other’s laps, of course, but for their proximity they might as well be. Mythra has one leg out straight in front of her, and her other folded—the folded knee falls right in her Jade’s lap, and he doesn’t even protest. In fact, he seems more at ease.

( _The party can attest to that better than he can, but: yes, this is the most at ease any of them have seen this Jade since he got here. They're mostly grateful for it, glad he found his friend, itching to know more about her. And why shouldn't they? They don't know anyone who their Jade acts like this around._

 _But then, none of them have seen him interact with Peony at length, either._ )

Introductions done and concluded, Mythra turns to Anise, who is still staring wide-eyed.

"What?" she asks. "Never seen a braid before? I know, these waterfall ones are fucking rad."

“Language in front of the children, Mythra,” Jade warns.

Guy and Tear share knowing looks while Natalia laughs into her hand. Mythra’s face goes very still, her smile half-caught on her face, before she scowls, blushing. She looks to her Jade, and there’s some kind of conversation they have between them, in the raise of Mythra’s eyebrows and in the slight shrug of her Jade’s shoulders, but what exactly the contents of the conversation are Jade is not privy to. After all, it’s not like he ever learned how to read his _own_ face.

"I guess I'm just surprised…" Anise begins, into the tense silence, and Jade hopes that she doesn’t use her newly learned word for ill. ( _Actually, there’s no way she didn’t already know it, but still._ ) Valiantly skirting around the comparison she probably wants to make between the Jades while also deftly getting the subject back on track, Anise asks: "You two really sat in there and braided each other's hair for hours?"

Mythra shrugs, grinning. "I mean, that's what best friends do, right? Braid each other's hair, have slumber parties, talk shit, plot murder…"

She says that last one then turns to her Jade, expectantly, and on cue he laughs. It's an on brand—if strange—joke, though Jade wonders how much truth there is behind it. He doesn’t bother scolding Mythra for her language, again.

"Hmm," Anise says. And then, brightly: "Does this mean the Colonel and Emperor Peony braid each other's hair?" She sends him a knowing smile. Jade smiles back, deadly.

"I'm afraid I'm not at liberty to divulge such information about His Majesty—"

"Oh you _totally_ do," Anise says.

(They do not.)

"Sounds like Jade for _yes but I'm not admitting it,_ " Mythra agrees.

"It does," the other Jade adds. Do they have to gang up on him so?

"Anyway, Anise, right?" Mythra says. "If you want, I can braid your hair."

Perhaps it speaks to how much of a kid Anise still is that she agrees so readily.

"Can… you braid mine, next?" Ion asks.

Mythra shoots Ion a smile much kinder than Jade was expecting, though he's grateful the boy isn't earning any of Mythra's ire. "Yeah, sure!" she agrees, and then in the same breath: "Jade, hold these," as she passes Anise's hairties to his awaiting hand.

Jade waits for them to settle, then delicately clears his throat. The wary looks it grants him aren’t anything new.

“Anyway, if you could, Mythra, I’d like to hear about what happened earlier.”

“Oh,” Mythra says, and hesitates with her fingers partway combed through Anise’s hair. She remembers herself quite before she has her thoughts sorted out, and her hands start moving again. “Yeah, I don’t know, exactly? I think I got possessed by God. I definitely got possessed by _something._ ”

Jade wouldn’t call Lorelei “god”, but there’s no use fussing over semantics right now.

“We think it was Lorelei,” Ion explains. “He’s… Well…” But he falters there.

“Jade already explained some of what you guys said about them,” Mythra says, with a shrug. “Didn’t make much sense? Not sure it matters—”

“Yes,” Tear agrees. “I think we should be more concerned with the warning he left.”

“If _Lorelei_ was worried about the amount of seventh fonons the two of you were outputting, then it’s hard for me not to be worried as well,” Jade says, plainly. “But disregarding the pure destructive power the two of you hold, I’m much more curious on why Lorelei was so moved to speak to us at all.”

“Mythra,” the other Jade says. She looks up from Anise’s hair just long enough to have another one of those silent conversations with him, and then she sighs. When she turns her attention back to Anise’s hair, she’s scowling.

“They showed me a vision,” Mythra said. “Of… what I think was our worlds colliding…” She takes the subsequent uproar of brief shock with some grace, though she’s focusing on Anise’s hair rather intently—that Anise hasn’t wrenched away from Mythra in her shock is incredible, frankly.

“If Lorelei saw that…” Tear begins, sharing hasty looks with first Ion, then Jade. Jade shrugs.

Then he notices that their guests don’t seem to be following. And, well, why should they?

“Tear, elaborate a little,” Jade says. “I don’t think our guests are aware of Lorelei’s reputation.”

“Oh! Well… He’s known for being able to predict the future, I guess?” Tear says, with the uncertainty of someone who has never had to explain this before in their life, because for all intents and purposes it _is_ common knowledge. “It was from him we received the Score, which dictates the memory of the planet…”

“And regardless of the possibility that the Score may be wrong, it would be foolish to disregard Lorelei’s powers of prophecy,” Jade adds, when she flounders. “Especially delivered personally to Mythra.”

Mythra seems unbothered, though. “I mean, I know how Foresight works,” she says, and that’s not the first time she’s said that word with that weight behind it. “This was a warning, not some kind of guarantee. We just need to not… do…” She turns to her Jade. “What was it?”

“Something about seventh fonons,” he answers, in the kind of tone Jade himself would use to undersell how much information he actually knows.

“If the two of you keep emitting seventh fonons at the levels you were earlier, the best case scenario is that you hyperresonate yourselves right out of this universe,” Jade says, brightly. “Which _would_ solve the problem for _us_ , but there’s no telling if you’d end up back in your own.”

The other Jade levels him with an identical smile. “And worst case is that we accidentally hyperresonate the rest of our universe over here, I presume?”

“Likely, yes.”

(Ah, that’s right, he forgot he planned to maybe apologize to the other Jade. Though at the least, it looks like he won’t have to right now. Maybe they can let bygones be bygones? …probably no good to hope that, but no need to trip over himself either, Jade supposes. He pockets the thought, like many others, for later.)

“The—” Mythra begins, then swallows what Jade is ninety-percent sure was a curse, and continues: “What’s a hyperresonance?” Then she considers everyone who just opened their mouth to answer her. “Actually, sounds like it’ll be a long explanation, and I don’t care that much.”

“Shouldn’t we worry about how to make sure that doesn’t happen?” Luke asks, sensibly.

“Or how to send us home,” the other Jade asks. “As much as I’m enjoying our stay, I’d rather it not be permanent.”

“Aw, sounds like you miss Malik,” Mythra shoots at him, her grin knowing.

“As if you don’t.”

“Not as much as—”

Her Jade cuts her off by flicking her in the ear. Mythra yelps, but laughs. “Okay, okay,” she relents. “Keep that up and I’ll mess up Anise’s hair—”

“And whose fault would that be?”

“Can you _pleaaase_ not mess up my hair, pretty-please,” Anise interrupts the argument with all of her youthful charm, which Jade knows comes from practice and not actually from her youth, because Anise stopped being the age where puppy-dog eyes were automatically effective about five years ago. Still, her tone sells it well enough for Mythra, apparently.

“I’m trying, I promise, kid!” Mythra answers, with the kind of bluster that suggests she has never had a lengthy interaction with someone Anise’s age before. “Jade’s the one—”

“ _You’re_ the one doing my braids,” Anise counters before Mythra can finish, sharp and knowing. Mythra groans and shuts her mouth.

Jade chuckles to himself.

“ _What_ ,” Mythra demands, glaring at him.

Jade shrugs, smiles. “Oh, nothing. Just admiring the passion of youth.”

“I’m older than you.”

“You don’t act it.”

Mythra bristles. Jade smiles. The other Jade stares, neutral.

“Colonel if _you_ make her mess up my hair I’ll kill you,” Anise threatens, and, well, that’s that.

“My apologies, Anise.”

“Should we get back to figuring out how to send Jade and Mythra home?” Natalia asks, delicately swerving the topic back on task. “I don’t know if _you_ have any better ideas than we do…” She looks pleadingly towards Jade. Jade hates to have to let her down.

“I do not,” Jade admits. “I suspect that what got them here was some form of hyperresonance—” it certainly felt as much when Mythra arrived, anyway, “—but I don’t personally know of a way to use that method to return them to their own universe. Hyperresonances aren’t exactly known for being _accurate_ forms of transportation.”

There’s some grumbling agreement on that, Luke and Tear sharing a knowing look, and then:

“We could ask Lorelei,” Ion suggests.

Even Jade blinks, slightly startled, because Ion has suggested pulling down the moon from the sky in the same tone one would use to suggest that it’s time for breakfast.

“Fon Master,” Jade says, very carefully. “Please tell me you have a better idea in mind for getting his attention than the nonsense we went through earlier.”

“I do, I think,” Ion answers. “Perhaps if we go somewhere where there are already a lot of seventh fonons, we can contact them there. The Absorption Gate, maybe? That’s easier to reach than the Radiation Gate, isn’t it…”

“Yeah, it is,” Guy agrees.

“Right,” Ion says. “Once we’re there, we can see about contacting them. I think… between all of us… we can figure something out.”

“The Fon Master, a descendant of Yulia Jue, and Luke? Yes, that should be quite sufficient for getting Lorelei’s attention,” Jade agrees. “The Albiore’s ready to fly again, right Noelle?”

Noelle looks up from where she was sitting, a little away from the group. “Oh, yes!” she agrees.

“Great,” Jade says. “Then we can go—”

“When I’ve finished braiding Ion’s hair,” Mythra interjects. “He asked, and I don’t want to do it on that- thing.”

“You have to finish my hair first,” Anise says.

“Thank you, Mythra,” Ion says.

“No problem,” Mythra tells Ion. “And you’re done,” she tells Anise. “Shame we don’t have a mirror for you to see, but—go ahead and touch ‘em, they shouldn’t fall out!” Her grin is proud. Anise’s hair is done up in something that looks much like the other Jade’s, though doubled, two buns sitting on top of her head about where her pigtails had been before.

“Wow…” Anise says, feeling tentatively at the braids. “Can you teach me?”

Mythra shrugs. “Sure, though I think I’m gonna do something else with Ion’s, but I can show you that. Ion, come here,” she tells the Fon Master, with no attempt at decorum ( _though the boy could probably use someone who treats him as just a boy, so Jade doesn’t protest_ ). Ion takes Anise’s place, and Anise hovers over Mythra’s shoulder while she sets about starting Ion’s hair in something that looks like her own does.

There’s a few seconds where Mythra instructs Anise on exactly how to start, which Jade doesn’t listen to, but before he can quite decide that it’s fine to let them at that while he perhaps asks a question of everyone else, in the same breath as an instruction Mythra interrupts herself:

“Also, hey, before we go visiting Lorelei,” she says, “do you think we could visit Nephry?” She makes eye contact with Jade, unfazed, across the distance.

Jade opens his mouth.

The other Jade says: “ _Oh,_ ” with feeling.

Mythra’s grin about breaks her face. She disregards the look she was leveling at Jade to turn to her own. “You _do_ recognize her, then!” she says, delighted.

“Yes,” the other Jade says, eyes narrowed as he works over the thought. “Sister?”

Jade wonders how he knows, because it doesn’t sound like Mythra mentioned her before. Is this just how it is, for blades? He keeps his mouth shut so he can let their conversation tell him, and subsequently shoots a look at the party so they don’t think to interrupt, either.

“Yes! Yes!” Only the fact her hands are still in Ion’s hair, Jade suspects, has kept her from bouncing to her feet in excitement. “If you recognize her that’s- that means we can find her. That means she’s a blade, too, it has to—”

“Well I certainly wouldn’t be capable of remembering a previous driver,” the other Jade agrees. “Not that I anticipate finding her would be _easy…_ ”

“No, but if she’s a blade, if she’s your _sister_ …”

“I know. We have to look. Hopefully she’ll be easier to find than yours.”

Hm. The fact that blades can have siblings is still somewhat foreign, to Jade, and the idea that they can recognize each other just by name despite having never met before seems somewhat absurd as well, but then, so are many things about Auldrant when viewed by an outsider, he supposes.

“Are you sure you want to meet her?” he calls across to his doppelganger. “That sounds like something that would just be needlessly awkward, given you’re from a different universe. And I doubt it would replace meeting your own Nephry.”

That, he knows for a fact.

( _Did Nebilim ever exist, in their world? Did they know her?_ )

“Oh, can it,” Mythra shoots at him, but she does turn, concerned, to her own Jade. Ion at least looks unbothered by the fact his hair has gone momentarily abandoned, though Anise looks like she might just take over for Mythra if they have to wait any longer. “Do you want to?” Mythra asks, much softer.

The other Jade considers it for a long moment. Then he shrugs.

“I wouldn’t be opposed,” he says, with a familiar hunger for knowledge in his tone that Jade knows there is no hope of stifling. At least it won’t be hard to sate.

He sighs. Mythra grins at him, knowing, and if she admitted this was a ploy just to get him and Nephry to talk, Jade certainly wouldn’t be surprised.

“Though I’d rather not go alone,” the other Jade appends. “The last thing I want is her thinking I’m you.”

Jade somewhat doubts that Nephry would confuse them, but—well, he’s curious, too. To see how Nephry interacts with this funhouse mirror version of himself. Not quite enough to go out of his way to set up a meeting, but certainly he’s not going to pass up the opportunity now that it has been presented to him, especially since it seems to be inevitable.

“Keterburg is on the way,” Tear says, helpfully. “It wouldn’t hurt to stop there for a night, either. We can’t exactly make the trip to the Absorption Gate in one flight.”

“And I suppose I’ll have plenty of time to figure out how to get us _both_ into Keterburg without us being seen in the same place while we travel,” Jade says.

The other Jade shrugs. “I just have to hide my face, it’s not exactly hard,” he says, in the exact inflection Jade imagines Mythra would say it. “Certainly, a cloak can’t be _that_ difficult to come by.”

“We can pick some up again in Keterburg, right?” Natalia asks. “I mean, we’ll all need one for the snow, anyway.”

“Oh shit, there’s snow there?” Mythra says, somewhat eager. She’s gone back to braiding Ion’s hair. “We have to go, then.”

“Mythra,” the other Jade begins.

“Don’t _Mythra_ me, your ether levels are way fucked and I’m not in a state to fix them,” Mythra argues, having clearly forgotten Jade’s earlier warning about her language. ( _Ah well._ ) “Plus I think if I tried it’d just be more seventh fonon nonsense, right?”

“I believe so, yes,” the other Jade says.

“Which we’re avoiding?”

“Not very well,” Tear interjects. At the simultaneous glare she receives, she shrugs. “You _are_ still outputting seventh fonons, even as we speak.”

“I think they will continue to do that as long as they remain in resonance,” Jade interjects. Not for the first time, he’s rather glad their apparent power to endlessly generate seventh fonons remains in _their_ hands, and not the hands of someone with the mind to use it for ill. “Even in small amounts it shouldn’t be a problem, though.”

Mythra rolls her eyes. “Point _being,_ ” she says, forcefully, “sitting in the snow for a couple hours is exactly what you need, Jade.”

Her Jade rolls his eyes right back.

“Why would that help?” Natalia asks. “Just out of curiosity.”

Mythra exchanges looks with her Jade in what must be a silent contest to see who’s going to explain. Mythra wins, which means her Jade sighs.

“Blades run primarily on ether,” the blade named Jade explains, leaning back on his hands. “Ether is… like fonons, but not quite the same. It’s a little more difficult to process fonons, and as far as I can tell, don’t replenish our ether reservoirs quite as efficiently. Which… might just be the lack of elemental alignment, in my case.”

He looks to Mythra for her opinion, but she’s busying herself with Ion’s hair in the kind of concentration that suggests she’s nearly—“There you go, Ion, all done,” she says.

“Wowwww,” Anise coos. “You look great!!”

Ion reaches up to cautiously feel the braids, smiling much wider than he normally does. “Thank you, Mythra,” he says.

He and Anise move a little bit away from Mythra to sit elsewhere. Though, since the other Jade’s attention is still fixed firmly on Mythra, so is everyone else’s. She blinks, then looks to her Jade.

“Elemental alignment,” he says, as if in reminder of what he wanted her to say, and she huffs.

“I mean, yeah, light is everywhere,” Mythra admits. “Or, moreso than ice is. So, yeah, I’m fine. But I’m pretty sure _you_ overexerted yourself.”

“I did not,” her Jade protests, before she even really finishes her sentence.

She’s clearly not having any of that. “You landed in a desert, and then you’ve been fighting—”

“Two battles, all of two,” he interjects.

“ _Without me there to support you._ ”

“I can fight alone.”

“You have limits.”

“They are basically nonexistent.”

“You are _well_ below healthy ether levels right now.”

“I’m really not.”

“And seeing as I can’t fix that—”

“I’m fine, Mythra.”

“ _You really aren’t,_ stop acting like you are!” Mythra snaps, having shifted her weight so she’s facing her Jade a little more. “I _know_ you process ether way better than Malik, but you still don’t process it _right_ , anymore—”

Her Jade shrugs. “I would regulate within a few days, a trip to the snow or not.”

“Yeah, but it’s not even _ether_ here, it’s _fonons,_ and who knows! Those might even be worse for you!”

“Mythra…”

“ _Jade!!_ ”

They stare at each other, for a moment.

“Why… would fonons be worse?” Tear interjects, delicately, a second before Jade himself can bring up the question.

Mythra shoots her a scowl. “I mean—They’re harder to process than ether, and Jade has enough problems processing ether as it is.”

“I really don’t,” her Jade interjects, again. “Processing it at 90% capacity compared to what I used to does not exactly constitute a problem, just an inconvenience _._ ”

“Is there a reason you don’t process ether how you used to?” Jade asks, nosy as he always is.

“Jade, come on,” Guy interjects, under his breath. “That’s not really our business, is it?”

But Jade has a question he wants answered, so he presses on: “It doesn’t have anything to do with the fact you’re standing here without a driver, does it?” His tone is as bright as it always is, his expression fixed in the one that always makes everyone mad. He makes eye contact with the other Jade for as long as the other Jade is willing to hold it.

The other Jade’s expression shifts from weary of Mythra’s concern to something much more annoyed. Mythra’s face mirrors it. Then they turn to look at each other, an entire conversation held once again in the quirk of eyebrows, the frown of lips.

They seem to reach some kind of decision.

The other Jade smiles and adjusts his glasses.

“I ate my driver’s heart,” he says, as if he were announcing he bought a new pair of shoes.

“You what,” Tear says.

“That’s…” Anise begins.

“You’re joking, right?” Luke asks, somewhat desperate.

“Oh, of course he is!” Mythra interjects, brightly. Once everyone seems to be relieved, she tacks on: “He didn’t _eat_ it.”

Her Jade is quick to follow with: “Right, I performed surgery on myself while dying, like any sensible blade would.” His and Mythra’s grins are identical. “It didn’t exactly do wonders for my health.”

Mythra snorts. “I mean, it was Citan’s,” she says. “When did he ever do wonders for your anything?”

“Good point!”

They laugh some more. The party exchanges uncomfortable glances and comments under their breaths but Jade doesn’t pay much attention, eyes still fixed on the reflection of his face. He’s starting to see why other blades don’t make use of this apparent loophole in the system. How many are willing to… or even _capable_ of…?

He realizes he’s not quite certain how truthful either of the explanations they just gave are. Both? Neither? It’s not something he can grill them about in front of everyone else.

He tucks it away for later. Mythra starts a story about how she and her Jade fought a whale together and won, which… Jade isn’t fully certain is true, either. But the kids like it. And it gets them thinking about something else.

Jade makes eye contact with his doppelganger.

The other Jade smiles, unburdened, at ease.


	10. Okay fine, I might be a little obsessed.

They fly approximately halfway to Keterburg before they stop again for the night, on some small island placed conveniently halfway. There’s nothing around other than some wildlife—which are _way_ more aggressive here than back home, and it’s no wonder they’re called monsters—and so no one exactly _has_ to take watch for the night, but Mythra volunteers herself, anyway. She slept a ton after the whole Lorelei nonsense, and napped a little on the flight here and she can nap some more during the final stretch of the flight if she _really_ needs it, but she probably won’t.

The night’s pretty uneventful. Which makes Mythra kind of _regret_ the agreeing to do this, at least until it’s just past sunrise and the Jade who isn’t her Jade sits upright rather rapidly, his attention swinging towards her.

Mythra raises her eyebrows at him, amusement bubbling in her core as she watches.

“You good?” she asks.

He blinks at her, and then his attention shifts to her Jade, and Mythra keeps her face very still, not caring about the judgement that might be in his eyes. So what! She’s holding her Jade’s hand as he sleeps! Is it a crime? Not the last time Mythra checked!

“You _good_?” she repeats, when the other Jade doesn’t say anything.

He turns his attention back to her. “Humor me, will you, Mythra,” he says, with absolutely no preamble. “You said your Jade has a _human_ heart?”

“Uhhhh, yeah?” Mythra answers, squinting. “Why is this relevant?”

“I just remembered that unless you’re a seventh fonist, handling a large amount of seventh fonons is potentially deadly, especially when—”

“Hold on,” Mythra interjects, because this is not a problem her Jade should _sleep through._ She extracts her hand from his so she can nudge him awake properly, which isn’t really difficult. He sleeps light. “Other Jade has a question, unfortunately,” she tells him.

“Oh, that is unfortunate,” Jade answers, sitting up. He manifests himself a new pair of glasses, because dismissing the old pair into base ether was just faster than finding a safe place to keep them while he slept. The other Jade, some-fucking-how, slept in his.

The other Jade doesn’t react much at all to the glasses summoning ( _though this is the second time he’s seen it, given they absolutely used it to prank him earlier_ ), nor does he react to the snide comment. Eh, to be expected. Still kind of annoying, though.

“What is it?” Jade asks.

The other Jade sighs. “As I was saying, seventh fonons can be quite deadly when handled by someone who isn’t a seventh fonist, _especially_ when absorbed in large amounts. I realize you are a blade, and blades seem to be meant to handle seventh fonons, but if you really do have a _human heart,_ it makes me concerned.”

They both blink when he says _concerned,_ somewhat surprised that he is.

“Mythra, you did mention that your Jade was below average in terms of his health, correct?” the other Jade continues.

She turns to her Jade for a cue. He silently tells her to go ahead.

“I mean, his ether levels are just low,” Mythra says. “Which is expected, given everything. He feels _otherwise_ healthy.”

“You want to run a diagnostic?” Jade asks.

“Run your own damn diagnostic.”

“A second pair of eyes wouldn’t hurt.”

“Fine,” Mythra says, and waits for Jade to pull his vest out of the way enough that she can tap his core crystal, pinging it as necessary. She considers the information for as long as she needs to to be sure of it, then shrugs. “Feels normal,” she says. Putting innate blade understanding of health into words is hard, because her brain really did skip straight just to _within acceptable parameters—_ it’s not like she’s a healing blade. “If your heart specifically is struggling worse than normal, I’d blame it on your fucky ether levels.”

She sends Jade a look that she’s well aware the diagnostic said those were _also_ within acceptable parameters, however they were also on the _very lower end_ of acceptable, and he just sighs back before turning to the weird reflection of himself.

“What do you mean by deadly, exactly?” he asks.

“Mutations.”

“Oh, yeah, none of that’s happening,” Mythra says. “Feels like Jade’s heart always does.”

The other Jade’s smile gets sharp. “Citan’s heart, you mean?”

“I believe they say _finders keepers,_ ” Jade counters, airy, despite the burst of anger in the emotion bleed. “Now, it’d be in your best interest to stop _bringing him up,_ lest I be forced to do something we’ll both regret.”

The other Jade takes the threat in stride, which probably just speaks to their shared sense of humor.

“Forgive me, but you know I can’t help being nosy,” he says, smiling. “May I ask one final question? And then I’ll stop digging up his grave, so to speak.”

Mythra wants to say no, just because she’s past the point of wishing nice things on the other Jade, weirdly enough, but the question wasn’t _just_ at her, so. She looks to her Jade. He thinks it over. He… is seriously considering it. Ugh. She guesses he’s even more familiar with his own insatiable curiosity than she is, but still.

“Ah, it’ll have to wait,” Jade says, and he’s looking over at Tear, who is waking up, as is Ion. “I’ll consider your request, in the meantime.”

“Certainly, and I’ll be quiet until then,” the other Jade agrees. “Also, keep watch on your condition. If you notice anything abnormal, let me know immediately.” Which is Jade for _I am quite worried about you and will do anything in my power to keep you from dying should it come to that,_ which is kind of a lot, from him.

“Will do,” Jade agrees.

The other Jade gets to his feet, to do what, Mythra doesn’t care, because now she and Jade have space. She nudges him.

“You’re always a sap, I guess.”

“Shut up.”

\- - -

Nephry Osborne thinks she has seen her brother more in the past year than she has ever seen him since they were children. She’s quite surprised he’s dropping by _again,_ honestly, and even more confused when she’s informed that he’s brought guests and no they aren’t ones she knows. Still, she knows Jade wouldn’t be here if not for a reason, so of course she lets him in.

She wasn’t exactly prepared for the reason being _there are two of him._

Of course they wait to reveal that until they’re all locked in the privacy of her office, and then the second one pulls down the hood covering his face. Feeling suddenly exhausted, Nephry sits down at her desk.

“Jade,” she begins, weary.

“It isn’t fomicry, before you begin any accusations,” her brother answers, sounding just as weary. “He’s the one who wanted to speak to you, not me.”

“I see,” Nephry says, neutral.

The other Jade smiles at her, much more pleasant than the brother she’s used to, and that is, perhaps, the most unsettling thing. Is he up to something? Just because he _looks_ genuine…

“If you aren’t in the mood to humor me, I can accept that,” he says, before anything else. “You look like you’re busy.” His eyes linger on the paperwork sitting on her desk. The young woman with him shoots him a kind of capital-L Look, but Nephry notes that and then _really_ takes stock of the young woman.

She and this other Jade are wearing shirts in matching colors and have their hair in matching braids. That is not a look she expected to see on her brother, ever!

“Who’s this?” Nephry asks, because that’s a better place to start, and doesn’t involve thinking about how utterly unnerving this turn of events is.

“Oh, sorry, I’m Mythra,” the woman says. “His—”

“—emotional support bastard,” the other Jade interjects.

“ _Wow_ ,” Mythra says. “Best friend is less syllables, you know.”

“It really undersells your role in my life.”

“You’re just being a bitch because I can’t tell anyone you’re my driver in this world and have it mean anything, admit it.”

“Oh my, I’ve been demoted, I see! I thought I was your—”

“ _Pain in my ass,_ now shut up, you’re keeping your sister waiting.”

“Right, sorry Nephry.” He sends her a smile that isn’t _wholly_ apologetic, but neither is it wholly insincere, either. Nephry closes her mouth and shoves her shock to a corner of her brain where she can deal with it… Later. Much later. There’s quite too much of it to unpack right now. She sends a look to her brother, though. He catches her eye and shrugs, eyes glinting with amusement. That’s more like the Jade she’s familiar with.

“Anyway,” the Jade who isn’t her brother says. “May we sit?”

“Oh, yes, sit,” Nephry answers, gesturing for them to find any chair as they please. She’d been too busy trying to digest this turn of events to notice she hadn’t offered, nor had they taken it upon themselves to sit, anyway. They do sit. Her brother remains standing, over towards the wall, the perfect position to observe all three of them. Well, let him.

The other Jade clears his throat. “Unless you don’t want us to stay…”

Mythra nudges him. “ _Jade,_ ” she hisses, and there are layers in the way she says his name that Nephry can’t hope to even begin decoding. Except… the other Jade can’t be _nervous,_ can he? He’s fidgeting enough that it makes Nephry wonder.

“Explain to me who exactly you are, first,” Nephry says, because curiosity is a powerful drug, and though she’s less addicted to it than her brother, she still has her problems with it. “And afterwards, I’ll hear you out.”

“Of course,” the other Jade says, and then without missing a beat: “Mythra?”

Mythra sighs like she’s used to this. “We’re from another world,” she declares, and then waits for that to sink in.

Nephry raises her eyebrows. She suddenly wishes she’d thought to request tea or something stronger before embarking on this conversation, but unless she wants to expose a _second Jade_ to Keterburg’s gossip circles, that door is remaining shut.

“Another world?” Nephry repeats.

“Mmhmm,” Mythra says. “We don’t know how we got here, or how we’re getting home, but we’re working on it, _not_ that it’s relevant to this, exactly.” She coughs. Fidgets like sitting properly in a chair is the most uncomfortable thing she’s ever been asked to do in her life. “The point is, if you need more proof about the being-from-another-world thing, well. Jade?”

On cue he pulls his shirt down enough to show off the red crystal set in his collarbone. Mythra taps the green crystal sitting in hers a second later.

“We’re blades,” Mythra adds, which Nephry parses to mean a _species._ “And we’ve got this thing called ether, and resonance, and our world makes _eight_ elemental distinctions instead of the six yours does plus the seventh which I _refuse_ to believe _actually_ counts as an element, and.” She pauses for a breath, turns to the other Jade. “That’s probably enough to convince her, right?”

He shrugs. “If not, we could try…”

And he… he isn’t _casting_ a fonic arte, because that’s not how casting works, but there’s certainly a pointed gather of fonons around him and Mythra that makes Nephry stop breathing for a second or five because those are _seventh_ fonons and her brother is _not_ a seventh fonist. And yet…

“I’m convinced,” Nephry interjects, perhaps somewhat rapidly.

“Not sure I can say I approve of you frightening my sister,” her brother quips from the sidelines, and she shoots him a glare, because she was more startled than scared, and either way he didn’t have to _air it to the room._

“It wasn’t my intention,” the other Jade says, and somehow Nephry can smell the start of trouble between them, so she cuts them off before they can start.

“What were you here for?” Nephry asks.

“Ah.” The other Jade fidgets with his glasses, and then looks… _pleadingly_ to Mythra. They pass some kind of silent conversation between them. He finally gives up and looks back to Nephry. “I didn’t exactly think this far ahead,” he admits, bizarrely. “But… to simplify things, for reasons well outside my control, I never got to meet my sister. I’m only vaguely certain I even have one. So I suppose I just wanted to know what you were like.”

It takes Nephry off-guard just enough she says “Oh,” before she quite realizes she’s even opening her mouth. Her mind catches up to her. “I’m not sure it’ll be a fair comparison. You seem very different from my brother.”

“Hm,” the other Jade says. “That’s probably true. Still, thanks for indulging me.”

“…Sure.” She supposes she _could_ refuse, tell him to get out of her office, wipe her hands of _two Jades,_ but… She isn’t sure she’s ever heard Jade say _thank you_ before, let alone _thanks,_ at least not this sincerely. And he seems… _genuinely_ interested, even if him using her to fill the hole of someone else in his life leaves something of a bad taste in her mouth. Never mind how uncharacteristic it is of him to care about her life at all. “Just curious, though, _why_ exactly have you never met your sister?”

He scowls, fiddling with his glasses. “It’s a blade thing,” he answers, vaguely.

“We age different than you humans do,” Mythra adds, to pick up his slack. “We’re _born_ different than humans are. It’s not uncommon for blades to go several lifetimes without seeing their sibling. Or lose their sibling between lifetimes. Being able to recognize each other on sight is… about all we have going for us.” Her gaze gets a little distant, heels kicking against the legs of the chair. “I only know my siblings’ names. I never got to meet them, either.”

That’s… several more things than Nephry even knows how to _begin_ unpacking. She doesn’t think Mythra realizes Nephry has never heard of these concepts before.

“In the interest of time, we’ll spare you the rest of our tragic backstory,” the other Jade jokes, though it’s the grim wryness that she’s more used to seeing on him. “Though if you’re really curious, you can ask your brother, seeing as he’s figured it all out.”

Jade slides his glasses up his nose. “I’m not sure that’s my story to share—”

“Oh I certainly don’t mind,” the other Jade counters, his smile sharp. “By all means, share your theories with your sister. I’m sure she’s curious.”

Are they really going to play explanation ping-pong right here in front of her? Really?

She sends a long-suffering look at Mythra, hoping for some sympathy. Instead she just gets a sharp grin, and then a subject change which Nephry isn’t quite sure is even for her benefit.

“Anyway, hey, since it’d probably be weird to like… have you sit here and tell us about yourself, Nephry,” she says, and oh. That glint in her eyes is identical to Jade’s, somehow. “Maybe you could help us figure out where we might go looking for _our_ Nephry?”

Nephry blinks. “Why would I know that?”

Mythra shrugs. “Just like… things you can see yourself doing. Professions you could see yourself in. It’d be more than we have to go on right now.”

Nephry scowls, as she thinks it over. It’s not something she’s really ever thought much _about._ She’s fairly content with her life, right now. Maybe she could have been a scholar? Or perhaps gone through the military, as Jade did.

“Are you sure it’s even worth the effort?” Jade interrupts, eyes locked with his doppelganger. “After all, you and I have very different professions.”

“Oh, I’m positive I was a military blade in another lifetime,” is how the other Jade answers, unbothered.

“Then,” Nephry says, because she has to start _somewhere_ , “does Keterburg exist in your world?”

Mythra and the other Jade shake their heads in unison.

“Flanoir’s _thematically_ the same, I guess,” Mythra answers, her face scrunched up. “But it’s a pretty big region. Lot of cities. …guess it’s a _start,_ though.”

“If the universe is playing nice about thematic coherency, anyway,” the other Jade laughs, wry.

At this point Nephry remembers that they implied blades (?) live multiple lifetimes (??) and that a location probably isn’t anything useful at all, when it comes down to it. Of course, they didn’t exactly let her get to her main point, either. “I was just thinking,” she continues. “Checking to see if I’m governor of some city in that region would be a _start_ —” If, as the other Jade said, their worlds retained thematic coherency, “—and from there…”

She doesn’t get any further before Mythra and the other Jade both scoff, again almost in unison. The laughter is angry, cold.

“Yeah, fat chance,” Mythra says. “Sorry Nephry. Blades don’t exactly _get_ to be politicians.”

“A politician’s secretary, maybe,” the other Jade quips.

And then quite suddenly he stops smiling.

Mythra turns to him, having somehow read his mood despite not having her attention him at all. “Jade?” she asks, concerned.

“He can’t have,” the other Jade whispers cryptically, darkly. Nephry finds herself scooting back in her chair, just on reflex. Her brother’s foul moods are… well, _foul_ is generally an understatement for them, to be frank. And there’s a kind of fury in his tone that she doesn’t like. “I mean, I suppose I wouldn’t know—”

Mythra is on her feet. “ _Jade,_ ” she says, urgent.

He doesn’t appear to hear her. His expression has gone distant. “He could have very well had the both of us, I could have met her, _I will never know._ ” The room is suddenly very, very cold, but the other Jade’s anger isn’t at all. It’s hot and bright, his voice increasing in volume. “Because of course he would have separated us—not that I could ever know if he did—but _if he ever had his hands on my sister—_ ”

Nephry has lost all comprehension of the scene before her.

The other Jade is on his feet. Mythra grabs him by the arm. Nephry’s Jade takes a step away from the wall, but he looks just as startled, and frankly uncomfortable.

“Jade, stay with me, come on,” Mythra pleads. “There’s no point—”

“ _I will bring him back from the dead and cut his throat open and maybe when he bleeds all over my feet it will be enough—_ ”

It starts snowing. Indoors.

Correction: _now_ Nephry has lost all comprehension of the scene before her.

“Mythra,” Nephry’s Jade says, sharp.

“I know—fuck, _shit!_ ” Mythra spits. Her Jade is still babbling about murder at least until she yanks him down to her level and—in a tone that feels sharp in ways it shouldn’t be, vulnerable in ways that make no sense at all to Nephry—hisses: “Jade shut your _fucking_ mouth, if someone hears you that’ll be the end of it!”

End of what, Nephry wonders, though she certainly hopes he wasn’t shouting loud enough that anyone outside her office could hear, because that _certainly_ would be an awkward situation.

The other Jade does shut up, though, either from Mythra’s threat or from the fact she’s yanking his hood back over his face and then dragging him towards the door.

“I’m taking him outside, because if he snows out there at least no one will _notice_!” And over her shoulder, she spits: “ _Yes,_ I’ll be careful!”

They leave. Neither Jade nor Nephry moves to stop them. The door slams shut.

Silence, as the last snowflakes settle.

Nephry turns to her brother.

“Care to explain what that was?”

Jade blinks a few times. “Quite frankly, I have no idea.”

Nephry raises her eyebrows at him. She doesn’t believe that at all.

Jade gives in and sighs.

“Alright, I’ll admit I understood some of it. But I suppose, first I’ll have to explain blades.”

And so he does. His explanation is rather concise, and she suspects he left out plenty of the finer details, but she gets the picture. A species of people where each individual’s existence hinges entirely on another person?

“I don’t like the sound of that,” Nephry admits.

“I’m glad it’s not the life I’m living,” Jade replies, and shoves a fine layer of snow off one of the chairs so he can sit. It all seems to evaporate once it’s been displaced, which gives Nephry hope for the state of the rest of her office.

“And the rest?” Nephry asks. “Your _theories_?”

Jade fixes his glasses. “Well, I’m going to feel like a parrot, but let me start with: do you know of a man named Citan Uzuki?”

“No…” Nephry scowls at her brother, adjusting her own glasses. “Why?”

“Well, if you find any information on him, pass it to me,” Jade says. “At this point I’m just curious.” He smiles, sharply. “Though I _do_ suspect if he exists in this universe, we could probably convict him of several crimes. Not that I _have_ to bring him to justice or anything, but it sounds like it might be a fun afternoon.”

Nephry rolls her eyes rather than deign her brother with a response.

“Anyway,” Jade says. “As far as I can tell, that other Jade and Mythra were his blades, and based on his little outburst, I suspect Jade was his secretary, as well.”

Nephry attempts to imagine her brother as someone’s secretary and fails spectacularly.

Jade laughs at her expression. “I know,” he says. And then he hesitates, expression darkening. “The rest I only understand in broad strokes,” he hedges, his scowl tight. “But if you recall what I said about blades losing their memories when they die, regardless of when they die…”

He trails off, but Nephry can fill in the gaps of what he’s implying.

“You suspect Citan killed them.”

“Oh I don’t suspect, I’m quite certain he did, at least once each.” Jade’s tone is light and his expression confident, but there is still a set of distaste in his jaw. “And if they told me it was more I would not even be surprised.”

Nephry shivers in the residual cold.

“As for his outburst, well…” Jade begins, but doesn’t finish.

He doesn’t need to. Nephry can put the pieces together here, too. Trauma doesn’t discriminate, after all, and she’s had enough brushes with how it’s affected Jade. Even if he was absent from her life for most of her teen years, that first month or so after Professor Nebilim died… Never mind his obsession for years, after, an obsession she’s not sure he ever shook.

( _“Maybe_ that _will be enough—”_

 _the other Jade had said; and Nephry breathes away the memory_ )

“It was strange, though,” she says, casually. “To hear him so worked up over _me._ ”

“Strange undersells it. It was downright unsettling.” Jade sends her a wry look. “No offense, Nephry.”

“None taken,” she tells him, and she means it. She loves her brother, she does, but she loves him only as well as she can love a man she hasn’t interacted meaningfully with for nearly two decades. “It _was_ unsettling,” she adds.

Jade grins at her. “I promise I’d never do anything like that.”

Nephry smiles back. “Likewise.”


	11. We just… we struggle sometimes.

Frankly Jade isn’t aware of much of anything until Mythra shoves his ass to sit down in the snow. He finally gathers enough presence of mind to note that Mythra has dragged him well outside of Keterburg, and that they _are_ in Keterburg, and not at that old base in the middle of nowhere. Still, though, horror grips at his core, and a voice in his mind keeps screaming _Nephry Nephry Nephry—_

Oh, Architect.

Jade groans and buries his face in his hands.

“You good?” Mythra asks him. “Braincells back from their little trip?”

“I take back every time I have ever given you shit for being _completely stupid_ about your siblings.”

“Thank you.”

Mythra sits down in the snow next to him. Jade sends her a sideways look past the edge of his hands, not bothering to remove them from his face.

“Is it really that bad, for you? Always?”

Mythra shrugs. “I think you short-circuited because we gave you the wrong Nephry,” she says. “That or because you thought about You Know Who—”

He appreciates her trying not to say Citan’s name, but it’s functionally useless. A switch is flipped in his core. The same fear and anger and all-consuming desire to protect and lacking that _get revenge_ stirs fires in his core, fires unlike any he is ever used to, and:

“He _could_ have had her,” his mouth spits, coated with fury. He drops his hands from his face.

Mythra groans. “Jade _please_ don’t start again.”

“We _literally_ have _no way of knowing,_ and he could—”

Mythra punches him in the shoulder. It works well enough to startle him into shutting his mouth long enough for her to interject:

“No, see, he _can’t_ have,” she insists. “He can’t have had her, because he would have _kept her._ Sibling blades are pretty uncommon, right? Imagine having a set. He would have boasted _the hell_ out of that. He would have kept you both!”

She has a point, but Jade’s mind keeps spinning.

“He could have had her before—”

“Jade, stop, please. _Please._ ”

He doesn’t want to, but for Mythra, he does. She breathes, frustrated.

“We don’t know,” Mythra says, squeezing Jade’s shoulder. “You’ll never know. She won’t remember it either. But that’s good, right? That she doesn’t remember him.”

Jade buries his face in his hands, again. Everything Mythra has said makes complete and total sense, and she’s right; Nephry wouldn’t remember even if Citan had her, at some point. That’s all that matters, in the end. Whatever happened is beyond their memory. But it’s hard for Jade to let that go when he has spent his whole life obsessed with all the things that happened beyond his memory. And whatever this fire is, roaring in his core—The fire does not want to let go at _all,_ because _if Nephry was hurt like he was—_

“I feel like I’m going to throw up.”

Mythra holding his shoulder turns more into a sympathetic pat.

“Probably just need to give yourself a bit to cool down,” Mythra says, and Jade laughs, despite himself. “You wanna work out some of this energy?”

Jade sighs, runs his hands down his face, and then straightens. “That… might be a good idea,” he relents.

“Great! Think fast—”

And then she shoves snow down his shirt.

“My _thra!_ ” Jade yelps.

She’s already cackling and hopping to her feet, out of his immediate range. Not that it does her much _good,_ but her speed does at least give her a head start while he scrambles to his feet.

Of course, one does not challenge an ice blade to a snowball fight and expect to win.

And Foresight being offline in this world means Mythra gets her ass handed to her a bit more summarily than usual.

But Jade’s laughing and not thinking at all about Citan by the time that happens, so it’s all okay.

“Alright, alright, I yield,” Mythra says, sprawled on her back on the ground. She sticks up a hand and waits for Jade to yank her up; he does. “Feeling better?”

“Quite, actually.”

“Cool.”

Mythra takes a second to brush herself off, manipulating light in such a way that it dries her clothes, though it takes her a few seconds longer to run concentrated sunlight through her hair.

“I’m gonna go check in with the other Jade, and maybe apologize to Nephry?” she says. “But I think you should stay here and chill.”

Jade sighs, fond despite his exasperation, because he _does_ appreciate the ice puns. “I would appreciate you apologizing,” he tells Mythra.

Mythra grins at him, finishes fixing her hair. “No problem! You stay here and like, make ice sculptures or something to distract yourself.”

Jade nods as if this some grave task Mythra has entrusted to him. “And what exactly should I be making sculptures of?”

“Hmm…” Mythra thinks on it for a moment. “Well, I was _going_ to suggest like, the most intricate ice castle you can manage, but _then_ I thought about telling you to make an ice sculpture of Malik, and, I think you have to do that one or you’re a coward.”

“Well, I am certainly not a coward,” Jade agrees.

“Then I expect one ice-Malik here by the time I’m back.”

Jade salutes, even though he doesn’t know how to _properly_ salute. “Understood.”

The emotion bleed gets almost unbearably fond from Mythra’s end, as well as something else Jade can’t quite pin down. She waves at him and heads off. Jade gets to work, as promised.

\- - -

It takes a little bit of hassle getting back to Nephry—which Mythra guesses is fair, since she’s in charge of the town? Politics confuse her more than they don’t—but soon enough she’s being shown to the same office she exited like, a half hour or so ago (she lost time in the snowball fight), and not-her-Jade and Nephry are both still there. They send her nearly identical looks of judgement—eyebrows quirked upwards in question—when she enters, probably since she’s entering alone. She can’t read the other Jade quite as well as she can read hers, but she’s pretty sure that face says _and where’s the massive headache of a doppelganger I have?_ Or… something along those lines.

“Jade’s out of town, don’t worry about him,” Mythra tells him. “And also he’s alright, if you were worried.”

Nephry looks like she might have been. The other Jade looks like he was and wishes he wasn’t.

“Care to explain what that was?” he asks.

No, Mythra wouldn’t. But she owes Nephry at least half an explanation.

“Just, y’know, brains are stupid, and trauma’s worse,” she says, shrugging. “He got stuck dragging up old memories. I’m sure it’s happened to you before, too.” She may not have worked out the _exact_ details of the skeletons the other Jade is hiding in his closet, but she’s quite certain he has a few, and that they probably have something to do with fomicry. Whatever. She knows how to keep her nose out of other people’s business.

Nephry and the other Jade don’t look at each other, exactly, but there’s definitely a kind of _yeah we do understand_ air about them, so cool. Mythra doesn’t have to explain much more than that. Which is good, because she’d really hate to ruin the very steady, very calm sense of intense concentration that Jade’s entrenched in right now ( _she cannot believe he actually took her up on the ice-Malik bullshit,_ Architect,) with her discomfort.

“Sorry about that, though,” she says, deliberately not thinking about said discomfort to, again, not ruin Jade’s mood. She laughs. “You know how it is with siblings.”

“Not really,” Nephry says.

“Not really,” the other Jade agrees, a half-breath later.

Mythra blinks at them.

She laughs, again, but this time it’s more to vent her confusion. “You… come on, you guys have to get _worried_ about each other, right?”

“Sometimes,” Nephry admits, somewhat pointedly, with a look at her Jade that he ignores.

“Define worry,” he says.

Mythra scowls.

“ _Jade,_ ” Nephry scolds.

“I admit, Nephry doesn’t lead a life that would give me much cause to worry,” he continues. “And I am also a poor baseline on a metric for measuring _worry_ , but that in turn leads me to be surprised by the extent your Jade was ‘worrying’.”

Ugh.

“Can we not?” Mythra says, because the last thing she wants to do is dissect anything about her Jade’s mental state with the Jade she doesn’t like nearly as much.

“I’m starting to think blades perceive their bonds with siblings much differently than humans do, is all,” said Jade that she doesn’t like as much says, shrugging, his expression unmoving. “And I’m curious.”

“Don’t let him bully you into answering,” Nephry says.

Mythra scoffs. “Oh, you don’t need to tell me that,” she assures Nephry. Unfortunately, she’s curious, too. “What do you mean _differently,_ though?”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” Jade admits. He fixes Mythra with a weighing look. “You have siblings, right, Mythra?” he asks. “Tell me about them.”

Nephry sends a look at Mythra pleading her not to indulge him. Unfortunately the two things Mythra loves most are talking about her siblings and indulging Jade, even if this Jade is kind of an ass.

“I’d do anything for them,” Mythra opens on, because it’s a simple fact. “If… I could just figure out where they are, first.”

“You’ve never even met them, right?”

“No. Well.” Mythra sighs. “I’ve met Alvis, but he…”

“Doesn’t sound like you get along.”

“He hasn’t really put in an effort to like, be around?” Mythra finds herself saying, even though that’s more than she wanted to admit to, and it’s not entirely Alvis’ fault, either. Mythra doesn’t want to leave Malik’s bar, doesn’t want to leave Jade. Alvis wants to travel, last Mythra heard. It’s conflicting needs, not lack of effort. “I mean he has other places to be, though,” she hedges, to defend him.

“You’d still do anything for him, wouldn’t you,” Jade says. It’s not a question, exactly.

“Of course I would,” Mythra answers. It’s the easiest thing she’s ever done.

She studies the looks she’s receiving, baffled.

“Is that, like, _weird_?”

Jade thinks about it, but before he can quite open his mouth, Nephry interjects.

“Let it go, Jade, the sample size is too small for any judgements even if it was any of our business,” she says, sharp. “Go show Mythra where the inn is and tell your friends that they have rooms.”

“Yeah, I need to know where the inn is so I can bring my Jade back to it,” Mythra adds, not minding the subject change too much. She’s not sure she really wants to find out why Jade thinks this is weird, anyway.

“It’s not like the inn is hard to miss,” Jade bemoans, but must decide he’d rather not let Mythra go without supervision. Or maybe that he doesn’t want to stick around with Nephry. The somewhat stilted goodbyes they trade would imply that, and also strike Mythra as weird. Maybe they just both think how the other does things is weird.

( _But it kind of makes Mythra sad, to see any Jade act so awkwardly around his sister._ )

“Nephry got you rooms at the inn, huh?” Mythra asks, once they’re out in the snow.

“Yes, and?” Jade replies, in the kind of tone that suggests he knows exactly what Mythra is saying but doesn’t want to acknowledge it.

“She didn’t have to.”

“It was just a favor.”

“I think you’d do more for each other than you want to admit.”

Jade refuses to respond. That just means Mythra wins.

\- - -

The inn seems nice, though Mythra honestly just notes its location before going to go find her Jade again. It’ll be more fun to check the inn out with him, and, besides, she wants to see how that ice-Malik is coming along.

Mythra…

Honestly wasn’t sure what she expected.

But uh.

“Holy shit,” she says, as she leans in to look Jade’s ice sculpture over. It’s a very, very, _very_ faithful rendition of Malik. Life size. Standing around with his arms crossed over his chest. There are buttons rendered on his coat. Stubbled rendered on his chin. Mythra knows Jade has literal complete and total control over ice but this is. _This is._

“How’d I do?” Jade asks, brightly.

Architect, Mythra literally might have to do something drastic when they get back home. And by drastic she means sit Malik down and tell him if he wants this to go somewhere he needs to stop being _so fucking subtle,_ because it just keeps missing Jade by a mile.

“Jade, I don’t have words,” Mythra says, quite honestly, because the only words she has are not something she’s going to get into while they’re a world away from home. “This is incredible.”

“Thank you.”

Mythra’s still leaning in admiring Jade’s handiwork. The design on Malik’s usual coat is rendered in perfect detail.

“I almost hate that you’re gonna have to take him down,” she says.

“I mean, I don’t have to.”

“… _Jade._ ”

“Think about how baffled everyone is going to be to find him just standing out here. It’ll be hilarious.”

He has a point. But.

“ _Architect._ ”

“My only regret is I won’t have time to erect one in the middle of town.”

“You miss him that much?”

“I- Wow.”

“You’re the one talking about erecting _another_ statue of him!”

“So I could completely unsettle the locals, and no other reason.”

“Uh-huh.”

Jade sighs and adjusts his glasses. “Well, are we heading back into town, or not?”

“Oh, right.” Mythra coughs. “Yeah, let’s head to the inn.”

\- - -

Nephry arranged for three rooms at the inn ( _I suppose we shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, but we really would have lived with two,_ Colonel Curtiss had fussed, after a fashion, which everyone had been willing to ignore but Mythra had followed up with a _It just means she cares about you, come on,_ that kept him silent for a full five minutes afterwards, and left Natalia amazed at how Mythra’s so good at getting under his skin, despite him not even being _her_ Jade). All this to say, that while there is some fuss about who’s sharing with who, Natalia takes the room with Mythra and her Jade. It honestly was just down between her and Tear, with the other option being to share with Anise and Ion, and… well, Natalia admits she has some ulterior motives. Nothing sinister. She just wants to see Mythra and Jade interact up _close._

Which is how she ends up with Mythra braiding her hair, and Jade braiding Mythra’s, the three of them swapping stories. They talk enough that it would be hard for Natalia to recount every single moment, but the things she remembers the most are this:

One; she finds herself wondering that if she were to find herself eavesdropping on the Jade she knows interacting at length with Emperor Peony, if they would act the same. And, furthermore, that somehow she doubts it. ( _After all, she has a very, very hard time imagining Jade Curtiss letting anyone touch his hair, excluding only if he were very dedicated to some form of prank. But nothing of this casual intimacy that results in him letting Mythra fix his hair_ again, _the moment she’s done with Natalia’s._ )

Two; though she can’t say she knows quite everything about either Jade’s past, she’s quite certain they’re very different. Jade and Mythra speak as if they are close to being _outlaws,_ which is such a sharp contrast to the figurehead of Malkuth’s military that she knows her Jade to be.

Third and final; a conversation they have, about blades, and further about the politics of their world.

By the third or fourth story Mythra boldly tells—laughing the whole time—about heists and theft and okay, maybe a little murder, but no one who didn’t _totally deserve it_ , Natalia finally interjects with her own incredulousness. Jade and Mythra fix her with an identical flat stare, and then Jade says, quite blithely:

“The laws are set by people who do not care about us. If we were to follow them, we’d both be dead.”

“If a law is unjust, it should be changed,” Natalia counters before she really thinks about it.

Jade shrugs back at her, his smile unbothered. Mythra speaks of all the annoyance, with her cheeks puffed out and everything.

“Yeah, sure, but no one in charge thinks there’s any problem with the laws,” she says, before Jade can open his mouth. “We’re doing what we can, with what we have.”

“…I suppose that’s all you can do,” Natalia whispers, feeling uncomfortably aware that what _she_ can do is significantly more than what the average citizen can. She _is_ the princess of her country, after all. She will take the throne when her father dies, and even before then, if she talks to her father he will (usually) listen. From Mythra’s annoyance and the look Jade is still leveling at her, Natalia gets the feeling that they would be lucky to get even an audience with whoever rules their country, their world.

“I’m sorry for speaking up about things I don’t understand,” Natalia adds, softly.

Immediately, Mythra expels the air from her lungs, in a laugh that’s too frustrated to really be called laughter. “Nah, it’s fine,” she says, with a bitter smile. “It’s not _you_ I’m mad at.”

“And what you said is true, Natalia,” Jade adds. “It’s just not something Mythra or I have the power to do anything about, at the moment. Maybe someday.”

Natalia goes to bed that night with her mind running circles about whether or not there are people like Mythra and Jade who live in Kimlasca, people who are victims to unjust laws, people who are frustrated and can’t do anything about it, because— _she_ can do something about that. If only she can first figure out what needs fixing. ( _If only she can first save the world, so that there’s still a Kimlasca to_ fix _._ )

She’s woken up far sooner than she would like to be by a sudden sound of distress that months and months of traveling on the road has conditioned her to respond to. She’s upright before she’s really thought about it, eyes swinging around the room. She tenses at the steadily building gathering of fonons, before her eyes adjust to the darkness—not difficult, given that Mythra is currently _glowing,_ which is enough to also enough to make Natalia start launching herself out of her bed, but—

“Go back to sleep, go back to sleep, it’s fine,” Mythra is saying, rapidly, as she leans over Jade from where she sits at the edge of his bed. Natalia distantly remembers that blades just do this fonon thing _naturally,_ and fully _unintentionally._ Natalia is still quite confused, and still more on edge than she’d like, but…

Mythra’s words—though likely not meant for her—do give her enough clarity to recognize that there is no threat, only her allies, and so she doesn’t actually have to get out of bed.

“Jade, it’s okay,” Mythra is still saying. “I’ll stay up. I’ll keep watch. Go back to sleep, you _need it_.”

And then… Natalia doesn’t know if Jade responds or if he just relaxes enough for Mythra to leave him be, and frankly doesn’t have the time to puzzle it out. There’s a flare of light as Mythra shifts, slams the point of a gleaming gold and ivory sword into the ground, and settles; still on the edge of Jade’s bed, her back to him, facing the door.

And also Natalia.

Natalia blinks.

Mythra blinks.

Very, very slowly, Mythra’s mouth shapes into an _oh._

Natalia opens her mouth, but Mythra signals for her to be quiet.

“Give him like five minutes to get back to sleep,” Mythra hisses, with each second looking more and more awake, and more and more ashamed.

Mythra doesn’t actually say what she’ll do when Jade has gone back to sleep, but Natalia sure hopes it includes explaining what this nonsense was. And if Mythra doesn’t _intend_ that, well. Natalia sits upright, her legs crossed under her, and doesn’t take her eyes off of Mythra. Mythra _will_ explain, one way or another. It’s the least she owes Natalia for the heart attack.

( _It crosses Natalia’s mind that this is probably none of her business, however, Mythra all but pulled a sword_ on her, _so, she really doesn’t care._ )

At some point which Natalia isn’t entirely sure is five minutes later, Mythra lets her sword fade away in green light, and then quite carefully stands up. She doesn’t move for what must be a full minute after that, watching Jade with intent eyes. Finally she must be satisfied, and she makes her way across the room, sitting down in her own bed so she can face Natalia across the gap between the beds.

“Well,” Mythra says, and then looks at Natalia expectantly.

Natalia isn’t sure which question she wants to ask first. She ends up asking:

“Are you going to stay up?”

Mythra nods. “I told him I would,” she answers, simple. “Sure, I was half-asleep, but I _did_ promise.” Natalia doesn’t recall making a face, but Mythra flaps her hand to dispel Natalia’s worries. “It’s fine it’s fine, I’m a blade! I don’t need as much sleep as you humans.”

Natalia will just have to take Mythra’s word for that. It’s less pressing, all things considered.

“Does this happen often?” Natalia asks next.

Mythra laughs, quiet, clearly conscious of her volume. “Hasn’t for years,” she admits.

“But you usually offer to stay awake and… keep watch?” Natalia ventures. It’s an awfully strange—and awfully serious—reaction to a nightmare.

At this, Mythra blushes with her shame. “I mean—no. I usually don’t have to. But you know how you wake up from a dream sometimes and are all confused? Yeah.” She shifts, folding her legs up under her, not quite looking at Natalia. “I was probably more confused than he was, but… Well, he still sleeps better knowing I’m awake, so.”

Natalia is still confused about several things, she’s just hit the point of things she’s not sure she has any right to ask the questions she has. She’s also not entirely sure she wants answers.

“Anyway,” Mythra says, somewhat weighty. She fixes Natalia with a stare that Natalia blinks at, because she’s only ever seen it on Jade’s face before. “It’s way past your bedtime, right? I know it sounds fun, staying up and learning about all my dark secrets, but unfortunately only some of us are actually built to pull all-nighters. Go to sleep, Natalia.”

Natalia blinks again. It’s… no easier to argue with that expression when Mythra’s wearing it.

“Right,” Natalia says. “Goodnight, Mythra.”

“Night!” Mythra answers, chipper.

Natalia goes back to sleep.


	12. I don't think you'll turn back.

Jade makes his way out of Keterburg to meet with his other self, who went ahead a few minutes before. They decided to leave the rest of the party in the hands of Mythra, and though Jade has only known his other self’s “best friend” for somewhere around a week now, he’s fairly confident the lot of them won’t get up to anything disastrous. Mythra should be able to keep them all occupied for a few hours, regardless. She has that youthful energy, despite possibly being older than Jade is. Must be a blade thing.

Much like the fact he finds his other self not far into the woods outside of Keterburg, cloak slung uselessly over one shoulder, sleeves rolled partway up, looking bright and awake and not even the slightest bit cold. In his element, indeed. His ether lines glow bright and red against the snow. He has his hair pulled back in a simple ponytail, again.

“Hope I didn’t keep you waiting too long,” Jade says, light.

His doppelganger shrugs, his smile polite enough, but there’s an edge behind it that Jade will just have to forgive. Especially given why they’re out here.

“You know the area better than I do, I presume,” the other Jade asks.

“Yes, this way.”

And Jade leads them to a small clearing in the woods, somewhere he hasn’t visited for decades. It remains the same, the felled log and its accompanying stump that marked this clearing both still intact and untouched enough by decay that the other Jade sits upon it without any apparent problems. Jade himself sits on the boulder that faces the log.

“Well?” the other Jade asks, his expression expectant, his eyes locked with Jade’s. He _does_ reach down to grab a handful of snow, though, which he goes on to pass between his hands, until it starts forming some kind of shape. Jade’s quite curious to know what his doppelganger is attempting to make, but he sets the curiosity aside. Now isn’t the time to get distracted by it.

Nor is there any sense beating around the bush.

“Why did you kill him?” Jade asks. He doesn’t speak the name Citan, but from the slumped shoulders before him, he didn’t need to.

“You mean you haven’t already figured it out for yourself?”

“I wanted to hear it from you.”

The other Jade sighs. In his hands, the snow forms a diamond, a star, a perfect sphere, and then his fingers obscure its shape.

“Imagine,” he says, “a game of chess. Or, several games of chess, I suppose, lasting about twenty years. The price of losing is death. I finally won a round.”

Ah. It’s not a direct answer, but it’s one that’s more informative on several layers. Jade picks at it like a knot, watching the man across from him shape chess pieces out of snow and then crush them before repeating the action. Twenty years is an awfully long time. Much too long for it to have been merely one death. And for him to say it was more akin to a game of chess implies that it was not something easily won or walked away from. But, no wonder, considering…

“And each time you lost, you’d forget your opponent’s strategies, all while he grew more and more familiar with yours…” Jade says, as much to speak life into the thought as to confirm.

“Exactly.” Another chess piece made of snow, crushed then tossed on the ground. His smile is grim, almost playful. “And of course, _he_ could get away with flipping the table and murdering me whenever he wanted, but unless I wanted to forfeit my memories, I couldn’t do the same. Playing the game until I could walk away from it with everything instead of nothing took quite some work.”

Jade can imagine. He’s not enjoying it, but he can.

The other Jade looks up at him, then. “Was that all you wanted to know?” he asks.

Yes, but.

“…did you really eat his heart?” he finds himself saying, despite himself.

The other Jade laughs, not quite kindly, but he doesn’t exactly sound upset, only a little exasperated. “No, didn’t you hear me?” he asks, sharp. “I performed surgery on myself. Thankfully when you’re minutes away from dying due to a snapped resonance, your corporeal form becomes more of a suggestion than a fact. It wasn’t difficult.”

He has an air about him that almost suggests if he wasn’t wearing a sweater vest over his shirt, he might unbutton said shirt just to show off the scar. Jade hates that—though the idea is, of course, utterly perturbing—he isn’t necessarily _opposed._ For science, of course. And that’s where the voice that sounds like Peony in the back of his mind starts laughing. Jade sighs and puts the thoughts to rest.

“I see,” he says, for lack of better words. And he is about to ask something else, when:

“What about you?”

\- - -

“What about you?” Jade asks, staring at the man sitting the boulder across from him, the man whose expression has gone from vaguely dumbstruck to trying-very-hard-to-play-innocent-despite-sudden-panic, and Jade allows himself some petty satisfaction over the matter. He promised Mythra he’d give the other Jade hell, so here he is.

The other Jade blinks. Fixes his glasses. Smiles, neutral, presenting himself baffled.

“What about me?” he asks.

Jade shrugs, nonchalant, picks up more snow to play with. “You seem to know everything about _my_ tragic backstory, while I know nothing of yours,” he comments. “It doesn’t exactly seem fair.”

The other Jade doesn’t answer.

“Or don’t tell me, that’s fine too,” Jade continues, unbothered. He’s curious, but not that much so. “I know how to respect other’s boundaries.”

It’s at that insinuation that the other Jade snaps. He goes rigid, hands clasped in his lap, his posture perfect and straight. If he were an ice blade, his glasses would have frosted over. His face does a good impression of it, though, suddenly void of all warmth.

“I killed my teacher,” he says.

And suddenly, Jade understands several things.

“There was no malice, don’t misunderstand,” the other Jade continues, his voice clear but his expression incredibly distant. “I was just a fool boy who didn’t understand the arte I was messing with, and she died because of it. And because I was an _exceedingly_ foolish boy, I thought perhaps I might cheat death and bring her back. Which is impossible, of course, but at the time I thought I could perform fomicry.”

Jade knows himself well enough to tell that the set of the other Jade’s shoulders is a touch too tense, and that maybe he should let the topic drop here. Change the subject. But he also knows himself well enough to know that they are in just deep enough that backing out would be difficult, and—

“Wouldn’t fomicry just give you a replica of a dead body?” his mouth asks, mind spinning ever curious.

“You can turn the clock back a few minutes with fomicry,” the other Jade answers, as still as a statue. If he were a blade, the ether he’d be outputting right now would have probably caused at least a gentle snowfall. “So the replica I created was living, but.”

“She didn’t remember you,” Jade finishes, because it’s not a hard leap of logic at all.

“That’s not what replicas do,” the other Jade agrees. “And given I was a _child,_ the arte was flawed, and so was she. She was barely human. She was… well.”

He stops, there.

He doesn’t say what happened to the replica, but Jade can guess. For the first time in the whole journey he feels a sense of sharp understanding for how his other’s mind spins. It’s not completely analogous, but still, Jade knows how much it stings.

It doesn’t matter if the death was technically your fault or not. The blood is still on your hands.

He swallows the old taste of his spear slammed through Mythra’s gut, and puts it aside. He shapes the snow in his hands into a snow-decahedron, to distract himself, to lighten the weight that sits on him with one of Mythra’s most favorite jokes.

“What happened to her isn’t important,” the other Jade continues, into that silence. “But her death weighed on me, in part because I was—foolishly—certain that I could cheat it. I spent most of my life performing experiments that would… well, they wouldn’t shock _you,_ I’m sure, but I’m ashamed I had any part in them, nonetheless.”

“And so you banned fomicry,” Jade guesses. Again, not a hard guess.

“And wiped my hands of it, yes,” the man in front of him agrees, his smile wry, but at least he is smiling. He twitches finally to adjust his glasses.

“And now you live with your regrets,” Jade says.

Somehow, the smile gets wider. “Well, if the world won’t remember I’m a monster, I have to in its stead.”

Hm.

It really doesn’t matter, what Jade says here, or if he says anything at all. But he speaks, anyway.

“You’re not a monster.”

“Agree to disagree.”

“You’re not,” Jade presses, though he’s well aware he should let it drop. “I know monsters. Monsters don’t care. Monsters don’t think they need to change.”

“Agreed to disagree,” the other Jade repeats.

“Fine.”

There’s no sense pressing it. Jade deposits his snow-decahedron on the log beside him, reinforces it with enough ether to last for days—maybe longer, in this climate—and then gets to his feet.

“I suppose if we’re done here, we should be heading back,” he says. “Shall we?”

\- - -

“It’s occurred to me,” Jade says, as they stop so the blade Jade can put his cloak back on before they enter Keterburg, “that I don’t know if you wanted to leave to attempt to contact Lorelei today, or wait until tomorrow. The flight the rest of the way there will be another couple of hours, regardless.”

“Ah,” the blade Jade says. He stops, cloak properly settled around his shoulders but leaving the hood of it down, for now. “Perhaps we should wait until tomorrow.”

“Need time to say your goodbyes?”

“I don’t want to argue with god today, frankly.”

Jade doesn’t bother correcting him on Lorelei not technically being god. He’s already well aware that it’s a losing battle.

“Still, if things go to plan, you’ll be gone tomorrow.”

“Good,” the other Jade says, and nothing more.

Well, Jade can’t blame him.

The other Jade smiles, needling. “What, are you saying you’ll miss me?”

“Absolutely not.”

Jade is still too uncomfortable with the entire concept of there being a second one of him to enjoy the experience enough to want it to last longer, or even look fondly back on it. He and the other Jade have been all-but at each other’s throats the entire time… mostly his own fault, he admits, but even still. He can’t imagine wanting to _befriend_ the other Jade, especially not at this late of a juncture.

And as interesting Mythra has been to interact with, he’s not going to miss her, either. It’s too unsettling, being known so thoroughly by someone he didn’t give that permission to.

So here they are.

“I guess that’s fair, I won’t miss you either,” the other Jade says, bluntly.

Also fair.

Jade sighs.

“I suppose I should apologize, though,” he admits. “I appreciate you indulging my curiosity, but I know I should not have been digging into your past to begin with. It wasn’t my place.”

The other Jade stares at him with an expression that basically shouts: _but you still dug, anyway, and the damage is already done, and also fuck you._

Jade sighs again.

“I’m not hearing an apology, I’m just hearing a lot of words, for the record,” the other Jade says.

Jade scowls and fixes his glasses. “I’m sorry,” he apologizes, as plainly as he can.

“Cool,” is how the other Jade answers.

He lets that completely blasé response to a sincere apology hang in the air for a few seconds, and then he tugs his hood up to cover his face.

“I’m going on ahead,” he declares, and does before Jade can stop him.


	13. Tonight it’s just you and your coziest sweater

While the Jades are gone, Mythra teaches everyone the best way to hassle their local Jade. It’s for a good cause! His life is going to be hell! Her only regret is that she’s not going to be around to see it!

“Not sure we can get away with that kind of stuff,” Guy laments, on the topic. “He’d kill us.”

Mythra laughs, shaking her head. “Wow, y’all really don’t know him at all, do you? He fucking loves you.”

She gets resounding surprise from everyone, except Ion, who’s surprise lands more at gentle confusion.

“You really think he’d put up with you if he didn’t?” Mythra asks.

“I mean, it’s kind of his job,” Tear protests, quietly.

“He loves y’all, I promise,” Mythra insists. “If he hated you, you’d know.”

( _Luke thinks back to Azkeriuth, and knows Mythra is right._ )

\- - -

Mythra asks her Jade for dirt on the other Jade once he’s back and they’re squirreled away in the privacy of their room at the inn. Jade’s sprawled out on the bed, his head in Mythra’s lap. His eyes are shut. His hands are folded on his stomach. One of his legs isn’t even really on the bed. Mythra is more than tempted to steal his glasses off his face, but she has more important things to do.

“So,” she asks, pushing Jade’s bangs out of his face instead, “what’s up with him?”

“Oh, a little bit of manslaughter combined with trying to use fomicry to fix it with disastrous results.”

“That’s it?” Mythra laughs. “That’s nothing!”

“Right?” Jade answers, his face quirking with a smile. “I know all trauma is not made equal, but…”

“Get some fucking therapy like the rest of us, dude, come on.”

\- - -

“You gonna miss this world?” Mythra asks, some minutes later, still threading her fingers through Jade’s hair just to have something to do. Jade hasn’t moved much.

“Not really. You?”

“Nah.”

“…I suppose I do regret not having more time to get to know Ion, though, or Luke,” Jade muses. “They seem like good kids.”

“We can’t take them with us.”

“I wasn’t suggesting we do.”

“…if Malik were here he’d try in a heartbeat.”

“Oh absolutely.”

\- - -

Somewhere in there, in the hours of the day they have left, Mythra learns about the fon slot seal. Appalled that she lost to this world’s Jade when he wasn’t even at full strength, she demands a rematch.

The fight ends immediately after Mythra’s Jade conveniently freezes a spot on the ground solid, causing Jade the Colonel to slip and fall right on his ass.

He refuses to fight afterwards.

Mythra’s kind of mad, but also, much too busy rolling with laughter to actually complain.

\- - -

Mythra braids everyone’s hair she can get her hands on, that night. Minus Guy, whose hair is really too short for it, despite best efforts. And the other Jade, of course, who isn’t speaking to them after the ice incident.

\- - -

Despite the not-speaking-to-them thing, the Jade of this world drops by just long enough that night to deliver a list of professions Nephry might see herself doing. That was nice of him.

“What do you want to bet Nephry hassled him into it?” Jade asks.

“Nothing, because you’re just the kind of sap who’d do something like that, anyway.”

“Wow.”

“I’m right!”

\- - -

There are no nightmares from anyone, that night.

Surprising, but a relief.

In the morning they rise early and begin the final flight to—hopefully—getting in contact with Lorelei.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> little does mythra know, auldurant doesn't _have_ therapy
> 
> ((on that note if you haven't read [nael's weird bad soup ft asch](https://starwardbestrewn.dreamwidth.org/602.html), you should))


	14. It satisfies your soul and can warm you to the core

The first thing Mythra thinks upon meeting Lorelei is _thank Architect, they don’t need to possess me to manifest, this time._ It’s nice uh… _not_ being possessed, though proximity to Lorelei still makes Mythra’s core sing in ways she’s not sure it’s supposed to. The emotion bleed sings with discomfort that Jade isn’t showing externally, other in the way he fidgets briefly with his glasses.

Also, _manifest_ is kind of a strong word for what Lorelei’s doing right now, because they still look like a blade in the first few milliseconds after being awoken, all light and no detail. As far as defining characteristics Lorelei has going for them right now, it’s glowing gold and agonizingly bright, having the sense of long hair floating behind them in some unseen wind, and looking person-shaped. That’s it.

Ion chances a step towards them—brave kid. The landscape here stopped making sense about twenty minutes ago, and Mythra would not like to risk bottomless pits, thanks.

“Thank you for speaking with us,” Ion says. “You… know why we’re here, right?”

“ **Yes** ,” is the reply, reverberating somewhere in Mythra’s core, the voice deep and melodious.

“Then,” Jade says, stepping forward. Mythra resists the urge to pull him back. “If us staying here would be so disastrous, you’d be more than happy to help us figure out how to get home, right?”

Tear shoots him a look like maybe he shouldn’t be so flippant with Literally The God Of This World. Jade doesn’t notice it, or pretends not to. Lorelei doesn’t seem to care.

“ **Yes. I can send you back at any moment.** ”

“Oh,” Mythra says. “Just like that?”

“ **Just like that.** ”

“Couldn’t you have… done that _sooner_?” Jade asks. He sounds a little bit at the end of his patience. He _feels_ that way, too, and honestly Mythra can’t blame him. Other Jade is an asshole and less time spent with him would have been nice, even if it _was_ fun meeting his friends. And learning about Nephry. Okay, maybe Nephry outweighs the bad bits. Still…

“ **My power is… limited, as things stand right now,** ” Lorelei answers. “ **To have reached you across the planet for long enough to send you home would have been difficult. But, now that you are here…** ”

“Ah.” Jade doesn’t exactly sound satisfied, but it’s clear he’s willing to drop it there.

“ **I’ll give you time to say your goodbyes**.”

And Lorelei vanishes.

“Well,” Jade says, and then turns around so he can address the group. “Ion, Luke, I’m glad I got to meet the both of you. I suspect even if I were to hunt your counterparts down in my world, it would not be the same. Thank you.”

“Thank _you_ ,” Ion answers, more emphatically than he normally manages when it comes to emotions.

Luke scratches at the back of his neck. “Yeah,” he says. “Take care of yourself, alright, Jade?”

“Of course,” Jade answers, easy. Architect, the emotion bleed is so fond. He’s such a terrible sap, and though he hasn’t said it, Mythra can tell he’s really going to miss those kids. She wishes they’d had more time, almost. Or a way to contact them again. Oh well. “And Tear, thank you as well.”

Tear nods, subtle. Mythra raises her eyebrows. Jade mentioned Luke and Ion, but he didn’t say shit about Tear that would warrant this kind of moment of quiet understanding between them. She sends Jade a look. Predictably, he ignores it.

Ugh, fine, it can wait. She has her own goodbyes to say, anyway.

“Yeah, it was nice meeting y’all,” she tells them. “I almost wish I could get to know y’all better. Natalia, take care of your country, alright? And Anise, give him hell.”

Natalia nods, gravely. “I’ll do my best. Thank you.”

Anise salutes, grinning. “You can count on me!”

Guy laughs, here. “No special goodbyes for me, huh? I guess that’s fair.”

“Actually, I appreciate you being patient with my incessant questions, Guy,” Jade tells him, easily. “And it was, of course, nice meeting you as well. I mean it quite sincerely when I say I enjoyed the time I spent with you all.”

“Uh, wow.” Guy is clearly flustered, but Mythra’s known that other Jade long enough to know he’s emotionally constipated and too up his own ass to bother trying to be sincere more than rarely. “Um—you’re welcome, I guess? Wow.”

Mythra almost wishes they could stay just to watch her Jade unsettle everyone just by being completely normal.

The other Jade clears his throat.

“I presume you don’t have anything to say to me, either, or if you do it won’t be kind.”

The emotion bleed definitely flares with anger on Jade’s end. Mythra sighs.

“No, you know what? It was interesting,” she says. “But you need to pull your head out of your ass, and maybe try telling your friends you care about them once in a while. It’s not going to kill you.”

“It might kill my reputation.”

“Fuck your reputation.”

He adjusts his glasses in the way that says he’s a little bit pissed off. Good.

“You should probably get going,” he says.

“Wow! Did I piss you off that much?”

“I just don’t want the world to end because you remained here a second longer than we could actually afford,” is how the asshole Jade responds, his smile insufferable.

Before Mythra can tell him to fuck off—or maybe do something about the fact _her_ Jade feels raring to start something he shouldn’t—Lorelei manifests again. …makes sense, considering they’re the being with Foresight. Their entrance _would_ be perfectly timed.

“ **All done?** ” they ask.

“I believe so, yes,” Jade answers, much more polite for them than he would have been for the other Jade. “Thank you for being willing to help."

“I’m ready,” Mythra adds. And, because Jade’s got the right idea about thanking the all-powerful being who is sending them back home, she adds: “Yeah, thanks.”

“ **Of course**.”

Lorelei doesn’t warn them, after that. There’s just a twang of something in the resonance loop, a note resounding at the depths of Mythra’s core, and then—

Well, it’s hard to describe what it feels like, exactly, other than it feels kind of like forming for the first time, again. All ether and no substance. Grasping for an anchor to the world, the resonance link not so much singing as screaming as it pings pings pings. Everything shifts sideways. Her awareness of the world vanishes. Snaps. Resettles.

Gravity kicks in.

There’s a shout of surprise.

Mythra lands _on_ the bar of Malik’s tavern.

From the scrambling behind the bar, it looks like Jade may have landed _on_ Malik? Unfortunately they’re figuring themselves out faster than Mythra could have really processed the mess. If only she’d landed a second sooner…

“Hey! And just where the hell have you two been!?” Malik demands, and then not a breath later; “Oh, thank Architect you’re _back!_ ” He’s grinning too wide to be angry. He yanks Jade into a hug which Jade begrudgingly (or maybe not so begrudgingly) returns, and Mythra’s honestly too full of her own joy at being _back home_ to care much about Jade’s end of the emotion bleed right now.

Before she can even hop off of the bar to give Malik a proper hug, he’s already let go of Jade and thrown his arms around Mythra’s waist. She yelps, then laughs, awkwardly patting Malik on the head.

“Hey, we missed you too, geeze!” she tells him, grinning wider than she probably has all week. “Now let go of me so I can give you a _proper_ hug, dumbass.”

Malik does, and; “I was worried _sick_ —” he says.

“It’s not like we _intended_ to vanish,” Jade quips. “Don’t worry, we’ll tell you all about it.”

“You mean I will,” Mythra complains, sliding off the bar and hugging Malik properly like she said she would. She forgets to be annoyed when Malik squeezes her tight.

It’s good to be home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> convenient list of where i got the chapter titles from [here](https://docs.google.com/document/d/19R8vnEh1R5efOLWKhSZKBSCPs3SM5M6C7d85YvTfigc/edit?usp=sharing%22)
> 
> also i guess i should say thanks for coming on this ride with me..... parallel universes being forced to interact shenanigan are always and forever my jam so this was a delight to write even if the end was like "i'm here to write introspection ................... and i'm all out of introspection" LMAO still i hope you enjoyed
> 
> (lorelei voice) get the FUCK off my lawn!!!!!


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